You got to know when to fold em - The Grayzone live

0:03Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the gray zone.

0:06We got a lot to talk about today. It's been a a while.

0:10Been on a little hiatus.

0:13Uh out doing some traveling. I was I spoke at the memorial for Michael Parenti in Berkeley, California last week and it was good to get out on the West Coast. Reminded me how much the Washington D.C. area sucks.

0:30And back in studio now and someone else has been on the road. Our close colleague and friend Wyatt Reed has been all across Iran uh after the 39-day Ramadan war and before the next phase, which is just heating up right now as Trump announces Project Freedom, a humanitarian project to provoke another war. So, we're going to bring Wyatt in right now to discuss what he saw on the ground inside Iran.

1:04Wyatt, uh you're sideways and welcome to the gray zone and now uh there you go.

1:10Enter some interesting angles on Wyatt's hotel room.

1:15You're kind You're kind of Turkish passing. Are you in Istanbul?

1:20I am in Istanbul and I've been Turkified by a barber uh just about an hour ago.

1:26So, It's good. I like I like that he he seems to have done your brows, which is good.

1:32He did actually. That was the first time I've I've ever experienced that um you know, when in Istanbul.

1:40I you know, in the Ben Shapiro decline of Ben Shapiro, I I now get my eyebrows done.

1:47Cuz his grow each time he lies, which is maybe why he's lost 80% of his audience.

1:54And ours keep growing.

1:55It's like an inverse effect.

1:58Um his as his eyebrows shorten, our audience grows.

2:04Something like that.

2:06Um Anyway, how long were you in Iran for?

2:10Close to 2 weeks.

2:12I I flew in uh at the end of um I guess I guess around April 21st.

2:22Um it took me a while. I had to go from DC to Istanbul, from Istanbul to Van, and then from Van I had to drive to the border because Iran's airports have been closed and just now opened up uh few days ago. So, I had to make the land journey from Van to the border of Iran, and then from there to uh to Iran itself, and then went to Tabriz and to Tehran. So, it it it took a while. It was It was almost a 3-day journey.

2:56Yeah, Israel bombed the Mehrabad Airport, repeatedly bombing civilian airliners, and it obviously wasn't safe to fly in. How uh under what circumstances did you enter Iran?

3:11Across the land border. But I mean like like who like who brought you who who hosted you, and what was your agenda?

3:20I uh there's a group named SAB that that organizes a How do you pronounce SAB?

3:26It's It's yeah. Sob. Sob. Uh that organizes a uh sort of a documentary fest, a media festival, once a year. This year, instead of doing that, uh it's been postponed. They organized a small group for independent journalists to come in and and sort of see the reality themselves. Yeah. So, great way to see firsthand what's happening, obviously access to Iran is pretty tight right now due to the wartime uh conditions. So, it was I feel very blessed to to have been able to be one of the handful of people who actually gets to see what's happening uh firsthand because it's uh it's it's obviously uh media's is

4:15has its own set of difficulties. You know, CNN was able to get a reporter in briefly, but I don't think they were able to see much of the country beyond Tehran.

4:23Um so, you know, I was able to see not just Iran, but to go to Tabriz, as I mentioned, to Isfahan, to Bandar Abbas, to the Strait of Hormuz, to Minab, the site of this horrible horrible uh crime against humanity by the US military.

4:41Um back to Tehran and then, you know, fly out. Um we were one of the first people who who saw these these airports back in use again.

4:51Well, you got you got right into the mix uh right after entering into Tabriz, you attended one of the patriotic pro-government rallies that have been ongoing since the uh unprovoked assault on Iran began on February 28th. Here's what you saw.

5:11Iranian city and I am surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of Iranians who are gathered here to celebrate their country uh to celebrate its resistance to what they view as a US-Israeli war of aggression.

5:24Uh it's people of all ages, all backgrounds.

5:28All of the kids, all of the women, all of the men.

5:31Uh they're all describing that they're in incredibly proud of what their country's doing. And if this ceasefire does end tonight, that they will be willing to stand by their government.

5:44So, what were your impressions there? I mean, it was this is there are there are massive rallies in Tehran at Enghelab Square.

5:55And it looks like they brought out uh as they do in Tehran um they brought out a ballistic missile launcher which was kind of a new effect.

6:08Yeah, I mean, it's it's impossible not to be kind of impressed by these rallies which as has been relayed to me were really kind of these grassroots expressions of support for their government. You're sideways.

6:23>> why I'm not sure why this keeps happening. Uh I am going to just leave it straight up if that happens again, but But yeah, it was it's it's impressive, right? It's uh the first impression is that just there's this huge crowd of people.

6:40They're all very much in support of their government. Um in some cases, they kind of serve as kind of a a hard line that uh gives the government leverage to continue to maintain a firm stance against the US and against Israel because you have this huge show of people in the streets that are not really pleased with the idea of negotiating with the US. Um you know, if if you were an Iranian negotiator and you're dealing with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and they say, "Well, I we want you to compromise on these particular issues." You can say with full sincerity, "Well, our people won't go for that." Uh because there are

7:21tens of thousands of people in the streets.

7:24Yeah, I guess we cannot go sideways on my phone, so I'm just going to keep this straight up. Every time we get a uh comment, it seems like it's switching to just wants to be sitting straight. Um Yeah, yeah.

7:39>> Yeah. So So that, you know, it it serves as kind of a check on any on the ability of the Iranian leadership to capitulate.

7:49You have a very clear uh massive group of Iranians who don't necessarily want their government to be negotiating, don't want to uh negotiate away any kind of uranium enrichment. Um and in addition, something that that is also very clear is that while these rallies, which, you know, originated obviously the government is is working with them and they're they're bringing in, as you mentioned, air defense and and kind of military hardware to to show off and for people to pose and take pictures with, but they originated uh just kind of grassroots organically, people wanting to do something to show their support for the

8:35government during this war that was imposed on them.

8:38Um and they also in that way they serve as a kind of check against the foreign riots, the foreign-backed riots that uh plagued the country uh for for a couple days in particular, but for several weeks at the beginning of the year.

8:56Uh the the Mossad-backed actors that would like more than anything else to destabilize the country through a series of violent protests and riots, they can't do that if every major uh city square in the country is being occupied by patriotic Iranians who are showing their support for their government. Uh so as long as these rallies continue, and they've continued for over 60 days already, uh it's impossible for the Mossad-backed actors to uh to to really act against the government and to to generate any kind of unrest.

9:34Yeah, that's It's great point, and it highlights one of the key failures that Israeli media has now been acknowledging. Ynet has a major feature we might discuss later about how the Mossad actually has taken credit again for those riots uh that we saw on January 8th and 9th inside Iran and that they thought that this war would generate more in that along with uh pressure from the outside brought on by Kurdish proxies that they would destabilize Iran and that project has completely failed and you showed that failure with uh that with your attendance at that patriotic rally. We also saw human chains formed around

10:17uh Iranian power plants and other um key pieces of infrastructure.

10:23This is, you know, one of the most honestly, from my point of view, one of the most inspiring anti-imperialist protests. People just defending their public assets against a project of state destruction by the US and Israel.

10:39Um you're you also uh documented a lot of US-Israeli crimes, including one of the most revealing Israeli crimes, the most revealing Israeli crime in my opinion, which was the Israeli total destruction of the Raphael Nia synagogue in Tehran, one of the major active synagogues in Tehran, which uh I I didn't actually visit it, but I walked by it on my way to interview uh Homayoun uh Sameyah, who is a the Jewish member of parliament in Iran's Majlis. Uh let's take a look at your report.

11:19Most people have no idea that there are synagogues in Iran.

11:23But you know who does? Israel.

11:26That's who carried out the missile attack that leveled the synagogue behind me just a couple of weeks ago, during Passover, in fact, as you can see, the entire synagogue was completely leveled.

11:38Israel blamed it on, quote unquote, collateral damage. But, Israel actually has a long history of carrying out attacks on synagogues itself. In the early 1950s, they targeted a number of synagogues in Iraq as part of a operation by Israeli intelligence meant to coerce the local Jewish population into moving to Israel. And it succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations. Over 90% of the local Jewish population decided to move. Perhaps that is exactly what's at play today with the Israeli government's decision to carry out these strikes here. Iran to this day has the second largest Jewish population in the

12:14Middle East after Israel. There's very little doubt that Israel would like for that to change. Most people So, you're suggest I mean, it what what was uh I mean, you're suggesting that Israel did this deliberately in order to compel the total exodus of the Jewish population of Iran. That would be my takeaway as well, just given the history in Israel. But, did you talk to any Iranians who also saw it that way?

12:47I think most Iranians are familiar with Israel's tactics see it that way. I was able to visit a a synagogue myself, and as you as you did, uh see that Iranians who are Jewish are able to participate in their spiritual life freely and without any kind of coercion.

13:11That uh it continues to endure during wartime. Uh So, so I mean, you could probably speak a little better to this, just the the sort of state of Jewish life in Iran, but my impression having visited in other synagogue in Tehran was that despite the Israeli attacks on this Jewish center of life that, you know, for for most Jews in Iran, life goes on.

13:43They are unbowed. They are continuing to go about their lives and they're continuing to worship in freedom, much to the apparent chagrin of the Israeli government. So, you know, not having delved terribly deeply and not having worshipped alongside them as as you did, but just interacting with them, it it seemed that, you know, things were kind of normal there and as normal as they can be in wartime. And, you know, I was I was impressed by that, not having seen that before.

14:18You know, it's it's just it's surprising. It is surprising even if you know that it exists. It is surprising to go into a synagogue and see kind of all of the staples of Jewish worship being enacted there and um the the reading of Torah scrolls, uh something that, you know, is kind of a sacred moment being shared with us. It It was impressive.

14:45Yeah, I mean, what what you're documenting there is the Zionist war on Judaism across the Muslim world or the Muslim majority world.

14:55The religious war that Israel's waging.

14:58And Zionism has a long history of attacks on Jews. I don't think that's well known.

15:04We're going to talk later about this freak out in the UK over a mentally disturbed man who stabbed two Jews, but also stabbed his Muslim roommate, and no one mentions that he stabbed his Muslim roommate in London.

15:22And this has just like a national meltdown. They're making new laws under Kier Starmer to shut down to to criminalize phrases like globalize the intifada. I don't know if like me saying that will cause this stream to be demonetized or banned in the UK.

15:39But there there was hardly any coverage in the West of the bombing of the Raffi Nia synagogue.

15:47And very few people in the West know about the long history of Zionist attacks on Jews.

15:53The worst attack, no one knows about the worst attack or one of the worst attacks, the bombing of the Patria in Haifa port in the port of Haifa in 1940.

16:03The Zionist Haganah, which became the IDF, bombed a ship filled with 1500 Jewish refugees from World War Europe who were trying to avoid extermination and killed 250 of them.

16:20And they they blamed it on the British uh in order to try to compel the British to lift their white paper policy of limiting Jewish immigration because it was colonization that was causing conflict in mandate Palestine because they were seeking to push out the indigenous Palestinian population.

16:40And uh the crime was exposed as a Haganah operation, a false flag which they attempted to blame on the British to change British policy. 250 Jews were killed and they're all listed, if you go on like the Holocaust Memorial Museum's website, they're listed as victims of the Holocaust.

16:59Pretty amazing. So that I thought that was a really significant report and and and the fact that you brought in the bombings of um Jewish targets in Baghdad by the same Zionist underground.

17:12Uh well, the same Zionist movement.

17:13Actually, it was Israel at that point.

17:16Was >> And Yeah.

17:18>> Yeah, and well and and then and this comes as the the sort of pre-Israel formations, the not just the Haganah but Irgun, all all of these sort of terrorist Jewish groups were attacking not just Jewish locations but British civilian and government installations, Operation Susanna, in not just in Iraq but in Egypt. Uh they were targeting American institutions and installations. They targeted basically everyone who they perceived as as preventing the formation of a Zionist state. And they were rewarded for these vile terrorist attacks with with Israel, with the with the creation of a nation of Zionists. And instead of being

18:12punished, they went on to become the prime ministers and leaders of this terrorist state.

18:18It's a great point, you know.

18:20Uh the King the bombing of the King David Hotel, another deadly terrorist attack on the Brits.

18:28You think Keir Starmer is operating from a place of enthusiasm as he cowers before the Zionist movement and Israel right now? No, he's operating from a place of fear with the King David bombing hovering in the background.

18:43Let's go to your most viral report which contained the least amount of context but is just a a minute of sheer drama. Uh this is you at the scene of the Battle of Isfahan where uh I think eight US aircraft, very costly aircraft, were destroyed as the US attempted to rescue a downed airman from an F-15E that had been taken down by Iranian air defenses.

19:14We still don't know who that airman is, by the way. It's a high-ranking I think like a Supposedly a colonel. A colonel, yeah.

19:22That's pretty high-ranking.

19:24>> Which and bizarre. What Why is this colonel flying around uh you know, instead of back at the base or ordering other people to do it? Exactly. And he was supposedly the weapon specialist.

19:35The whole thing is weird. Uh well, let's watch your report and get your take.

19:40We're here in the outskirts of Isfahan in the site of the most famous battle of the entire US-Israeli war on Iran.

19:50Around me are the remnants of the US warplanes which came according to the United States to rescue pilots. According to the Iranians, that's not why they were here. They say they were here to steal the enriched uranium, to seize it and prevent Iran from ever pursuing nuclear power or any type of nuclear program. But as you can see, the American warplanes which came here never left.

20:15They came to Isfahan and in Isfahan, they will stay.

20:22So, what was going on there? There was a sort of a patriotic rally that you happened upon. What was it like at the scene for us?

20:32Well, we were brought in I think the first foreign journalists to be able to inspect the site of this battle. What seemed to be a battle between the American military forces which were ostensibly brought in to rescue this downed airman, uh but which Iranians insist was was actually sort of a forward operating base established in order to seize uh the uranium in Isfahan.

21:05And frankly, just given the amount and the range sorry, the the kind of distance between the charred ground the areas of the ground, the craters across the ground.

21:19It seemed far less likely that these were simply that as the as the US side claims were sort of simply disposed of on their way out of the country in order to prevent the Iranians from getting their hands on them. It looks much more like there there had so like a serious battle had taken place there to me.

21:43So I was able to take footage up close of the charred remains of several of these aircraft. I'm not enough of a military to expert to be able to have been able to identify the different parts of the wreckage, but I did come across a you know, a metal plate bearing the name Lockheed Martin on it attached to one of these. It was very clear these are indeed American aircraft that were destroyed. I believe they may have been the MC-130s that were supposedly brought in to for some reason enable a rescue mission which again is just a very strange aircraft to use. Why would you need a huge cargo plane Right.

22:32>> in order to rescue a handful of airmen.

22:36Why wouldn't you use a helicopter or something that would be much easier to get in and out something that would make much less noise, make have much less of a heat signature be far less less easy to spot from radar perspective or simply to the naked eye.

22:56You know, another one of these strange points that has never really been totally explained. And you know, while we're at it, it's been 60 days. This is the least popular war in modern American history. Why on earth, if we had conducted this amazing Black Hawk Down, you know, style movie cinematic rescue, why on earth are the airmen not being named? Why aren't they being paraded around Times Square? Why aren't we having huge rallies in their honor saying, "Wow, look at these wonderful guys." And look here are the heroes who brought them home. Why are they anonymous still? It's just none of it really adds up. So, that to me,

23:37uh just on the basis of the kind of circumstantial evidence, which I think is probably the only thing we're going to have at least for the next few years, uh pointed far more in the direction of the Iranian narrative than it did in the US. And And going back to why was a colonel among the two airmen who were downed? Someone so high-ranking who is a weapon specialist who clearly has some advanced skill set. Yeah, we're not We're not the Israeli military. Colonels are real officers in the Air Force. Exactly. In Israel, everyone gets to be an officer.

24:10Um There were ID cards found of nuclear specialists as well who had assignments in Israel.

24:19Well, and and there were other strange Why was somebody carrying around a passport? There was a passport located.

24:26Why would they be carrying around a passport if they were operating on a rescue mission?

24:32Military, you know, soldiers, airmen, naval office No none of them carry around identifying documents. They have dog tags. That's what they have. Dog tags wrapped around their necks. That's how they identify themselves when they're going on missions. Nobody carries around a passport for a standard combat operation.

24:50It does seem to me like there's a cover-up at play and there's more reporting to to be done on the battle of Isfahan, it just doesn't add up and I have to assume that the both of the airmen who were rescued were severely injured, which might be one reason why we're not hearing from them or seeing them.

25:16Um but you know, they should they should be speaking about what the mission is.

25:23Reporters should be asking these questions. If they indeed do exist, yes.

25:28If they exist.

25:31The yeah, the whole thing is utterly bizarre.

25:36Do they even exist?

25:38Right.

25:40Um so from there you took a train to Bandar Abbas, is that right?

25:48Yes, from Isfahan I went to Bandar Abbas via an overnight train.

25:55So we had um Ahmed Salad Din who was down there who was first in Iran with Dimitri Lascaris.

26:04We had them both on and you know, they talked about their train ride to Bandar Abbas.

26:09Uh definitely puts Amtrak to shame.

26:15Uh also uh the Iranian national train line did not have Hunter Biden on its board of directors.

26:21What was that train ride like?

26:25It was once in a lifetime, you know, it's it's in it was an incredible way to see the country um to meet people. At that point my video from Isfahan had gone kind of viral on Iranian media, so several of the conductors on the train recognized me and wanted to take selfies with me, which was kind of fun.

26:53Uh the food was great. They were constantly serving very nice tea.

26:58The scenery was absolutely incredible.

27:02We went through a dust storm at some point um and had the windows open so my laptop probably needs a more thorough cleaning than I've been able to give it.

27:13Um but uh you know, that that was just is is something like out out of a movie to me just, you know, oh, we're we're going through a dust storm in a train in Iran and going to Bandar Abbas headed to the Strait of Hormuz. It was a it was kind of a uh an interesting and fun situation and I I definitely will never forget it. Uh the train itself, I think a ticket cost about $10 which for me as a semi-regular Amtrak customer is the cheapest I've ever paid for any train ticket in my life.

27:49Um let alone one that included food and beverages and, you know, overnight and bedding etc. etc.

27:57So, I was I was very positively impressed by how they've been able to maintain the rail system uh under sanctions, under wartime conditions um and kind of pre- created a very pleasant experience as a passenger.

28:14Unfortunately, you couldn't play cards around an old uh barrel with a bottle of whiskey. Uh however, it sounds like an incredible experience that wound you up in the Strait of Hormuz the following day and so you're I think the second American reporter to be able to get to the Strait of Hormuz.

28:35Uh this is your report. I'm here reporting from the Strait of Hormuz where the naval standoff between Iran and the US continues 2 months to the day after the US and Israel launched a sneak attack on Iran mid negotiations. Now on Sunday CENTCOM announced that it had intercepted another Iranian vessel as it attempted to transit the strait bringing the total number of vessels intercepted by the US to 38 now. Last week when the US attorney Jeanine Pirro boasted that the US government had taken two Iranian oil tankers by force, they said they did so on the basis of so-called seizure warrants based on their own unilateral

29:15and internationally unrecognized sanctions regime. A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry says the move by the US represents, quote, "The outright legalization of piracy and armed robbery on the high seas." And he warned it would lead to, quote, "The return of pirates. Only now he said they operate with government-issued warrants." And So yeah, go I mean it's a slightly longer report.

29:40I forgot Jeanine Pirro was the US attorney. Uh that's pretty There's There's There's I mean speaking of like a pirate ship, that's what the Trump administration is.

29:52But uh I mean what what kind of insight did you get there in the Strait of Hormuz just uh seeing the physical landscape and uh the discussions you had, you spoke to the governor of Bandar Abbas.

30:07You had an in-depth interview down there. Um what kind of insights did you get heading into what Trump calls Project Freedom, this announcement of uh the US Navy escorting ships through the strait but not actually escorting them.

30:24Uh there's there's been report There have been reports since our conversation began of Iranian strikes on Emirati oil facilities. So it looks like the conflict is reigniting thanks to Trump's uh show of force. Iran is redirecting shipping towards Dubai.

30:41In other words, ordering tankers to head towards the Emirates and away from the Strait of Hormuz. But, what kind of insights did you gather down there?

30:50Well, first of all, Iran has a huge fleet of various types of of tankers, cargo ships, vessels.

30:58Uh there were dozens and dozens and dozens of of ships just kind of parked waiting for things to cool off.

31:06Um and given that they are in Bandar Abbas, most of them are Iranian flagged or outside of Bandar Abbas, I should say. Most of them are Iranian flagged.

31:16Uh most of them uh are are attempting to trade goods on on behalf of Iranian consumers.

31:25Um other insights, uh it's very very narrow. It's very quick. You know, it takes only a handful of minutes. I think really, you know, you could you could cross it in less than an hour if you were on a uh quick enough boat.

31:42And uh you you can see the the other side.

31:48Um you know, you can see straight through to Oman uh pretty quickly after you leave the shore of Bandar Abbas.

31:55So, it just kind of reminds you how difficult it would be for vessels trying to operate under the so-called Operation Freedom to successfully transit. There's nowhere there to hide. It's also relatively shallow.

32:12Uh we saw a shipwreck, you know, of of one of the ships that had been taken out uh by the Iranian side for refusing their orders. Yeah.

32:23>> And you can see parts of the ship above water. It's um again, you know, it's a very it's a very narrow, very uh shallow strait. So, the idea that they're going to sneak ships through there is just kind of farcical to me.

32:39It's It's not a body of water that's conducive to any kind of sub you know, subversive sort of activities there. So, that's that was my main takeaway is just this is not going to be a challenge for the Iranians to control.

32:56The Navy can can can make its way back and forth very quickly. They can mine it very effectively. They could do all sorts of things. They could send underwater drones. They could send fast boats in a matter of minutes to intercept any boats that they saw going through there and it's not hard to track them either.

33:15So, again, you know, that that that with that in mind I would say the claim today by CENTCOM that two ships had been guided through by the US military, that two US flagged ships have been guided through. I would say the same thing I said about these airmen. Show them to us. What What were their names? You know, who are they? How did they do this? Show us a picture. You know, prove to us that this did indeed happen. Show us path of a transponder.

33:46None of that has been forthcoming and I don't think it will be.

33:49No, it won't. And this was uh yesterday.

33:55I mean, here's a ship being taken out. A tanker another tanker burning. This was immediately after Trump announced project freedom on Sunday cuz the markets were going to open and he wanted to lower the price of Brent crude. And now oil is back up again over a well well over a hundred a barrel. He lowered it momentarily.

34:15And you know, there's a stock market wipeout.

34:20And then here's you know, this is the dump the Trump administration This is like their receptacle Barak Ravid former Israeli reservist. Steve Witkoff like just has this guy on the phone all the time. I don't know if he has time to like you know, eat cereal for breakfast when Steve Whitcoff is constantly leaking to him.

34:42The new Hormuz initiative will not necessarily include US Navy ships according to two US officials. Maybe he got Kushner on the line, too.

34:50Uh one of the officials said US Navy ships will be in the vicinity in case they need to prevent Iran's military from attacking commercial ships moving through the strait. Well, it looks like uh they didn't uh prevent that attack.

35:02The official said the US Navy is going to provide commercial ships with information on the best maritime lanes in the strait, especially when it comes to using lanes that were not mined by the Iranian military.

35:12So, uh the basically the US exis- uh CENTCOM exists to provide advice on where the mines are.

35:22But, there have been reports that Iran has even lost track of some of its mines. Do you think if you were um I don't know, the captain of a tanker, that you would just trust the US military? Oh, they said the mines are over there. Here's the safe lane through this very narrow strait.

35:37Uh the uh like 23 km across. I'm going to take my I'm going to take my chances.

35:43And by the way, uh all Iran has is mines. It doesn't have fast boats. It doesn't have anti-ship missiles. I'll just ignore the incoming missile fire.

35:50Sounds like a plan.

35:53Very very questionable idea.

35:56Um and apparently these captains need to check not the CENTCOM page, but check the Talking Israeli Parrot page, you know, Barak Ravid's uh Twitter profile because I guess he's a more reliable barometer for what's actually happening in the in the White House than CENTCOM itself.

36:17Uh no, it's it's absurd. The the idea that any rational human being, let alone the captain of a ship, would intentionally plunge themselves through this gauntlet is ridiculous. And I think it was actually uh if I'm not mistaken, there's a quote in this Wall Street Journal article that says exactly that by by a captain of a ship um who pointed out that uh you know, I think I'm not sure if we have this this Wall Street Journal Yeah.

36:49>> Um if you pull that article up um there's a well, it might not actually be in that one. Might be in the con- that might be the condensed version, but there was a quote uh by by a ship captain saying that this was totally absurd, the idea that we're going to go along with this. And that by being escorted by US naval forces, we actually make ourselves into more of a target, which is true.

37:14Uh Iran would have every incentive to blow up both the ship itself and any kind of military ship that was escorting it. Now, Trump made it very clear just a few hours later, or the Trump administration did rather that there would be no escort, that they they you guys are on your own. You're welcome to take our advice about you know, our best guess as to where these mines might be.

37:41But we're not going to do any heavy lifting for you.

37:45Um which is wise, you know? Why would they risk their lives plunging headfirst through this incredibly dangerous strait? Much better to get some global [ __ ] to do it instead and uh you know, find out where the mines are that way.

38:02It turns out that the Trump administration is not playing 13-dimensional chess. That they actually have no strategy and they're just managing the chaos they unleashed with this insane war.

38:14Which they fought which they're fighting for Israel as they've acknowledged on the White House website most recently.

38:21And that uh Iran is now claiming to have fired warning missiles at you a US destroyer and possibly even hit the US destroyer and CENTCOM is in full denial mode.

38:37This is Iran's footage of warning shots fired at US destroyers, missiles, rockets, and drones.

38:56So, like where where where could this possibly lead except more pointless conflict in which the US will not achieve any military objectives and the Gulf states will continue to get hammered and the global economy will spiral into chaos.

39:16Project freedom is something that Trump uh devised flying he didn't devise it authorized flying you know, just flying blind.

39:30I know who devised it. It was the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which we should probably call the Foundation for the destruction of whatever's left of our democracy.

39:38This Israeli front group in Washington that also devised Trump's naval blockade which is destroying the global economy and is supposed to be blockading the uh the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz which has led us back into conflict because Trump was getting antsy and Trump declared that Iran's terms were unacceptable because they're unacceptable to the Israelis who are controlling this entire situation.

40:08So, I don't see how this leads anywhere but towards conflict. I've seen some warn this could lead to a Gulf of Tonkin like false flag attack.

40:19But why would that even matter? Let's say the US says, "Oh, Iran hit our destroyer."

40:25Well, Iran would be happy to take credit for that. They're not afraid of further conflict. They're not trying to avoid it. They have the initiative.

40:34Uh and they have the upper hand. They have the cards.

40:39Yeah, I mean, you're right and um Operation Freedom, emphasis on dumb, uh seems to point in exactly this direction and and as you pointed out the the strategy appears to be getting dictated from Tel Aviv. And this is something that multiple high-level Iranian officials have expressed to me that it's difficult to negotiate with the White House given that they appear to be an Israeli proxy.

41:10That how, you know, how how can you separate between the American interest and the Israeli interest when the American interest seems to have so slavishly subverted subverted itself to the Israeli interest when you have people like Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcoff negotiating on behalf of of whom? No one seems to know. Who Who's interest do they represent? It's uh it's a very legitimate question. And uh you know, from the Iranian perspective uh there's very little to be gained by negotiating with these people. And as we can see by their actions over the past 12 hours, it seems preferable from their

41:55perspective to just continue with hostilities rather than engage in some kind of negotiating charade in which every time they try to negotiate in good faith faith, they are uh they're getting bitten in response.

42:11Um and so there's really nothing to be gained by doing so. The only thing uh, from their perspective that's left is to speak in military terms.

42:23Yeah, since you brought up, you know, the US negotiating team, Steve Witcoff has just added Nick Stewart from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which was founded to defend Israel's interests in Washington and is is an Israeli intelligence cutout.

42:39So, basically he added an adviser to help him articulate what he already believes, which is what Israel wants.

42:49Uh, you This is where I was going to go.

42:51I'm glad you brought that up, that you have had access to some pretty high-level Iranian officials.

43:01Uh, you just interviewed Ebrahim Azizi.

43:04Actually, you had two engagements with Abraham Abraham Azizi, who is the uh, head of the National Security Council in Iran's Parliament.

43:16And you discussed Iran's view of the US negotiating team and its posture in the Strait of Hormuz and a lot of other issues. We should have that up later today. We're editing it right now, but give us a preview of that interview and what Azizi told you.

43:33Uh, especially as or with regards to the Strait of Hormuz.

43:40Well, I I just mentioned one point he he made, which is that, uh, the proximity between the US negotiating team and the Israeli government makes them extremely unreliable negotiating partners. Um, he also noted that, uh, you know, that and this has been expressed to me again, multiple times, that every time Trump says something or every time these negotiators say something, uh they will fly off to Washington, and then that will immediately be undone by a statement or a phrase by President Trump.

44:24Uh so there's this kind of back and forth um in which no one really seems to know who's calling the shots. Um no one really seems to know whether or not these negotiators actually speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves.

44:40Uh other interesting points that he noted, I I asked him whether there any circumstances in which Iran would be willing to allow the US to return to its military bases in the Middle East, which have been almost entirely abandoned under under Iranian fire.

45:02Um and he said uh with kind of a knowing smile, he said, "I don't think so."

45:08Uh he he was a very quick uh you know, by I don't think so, I took that to mean absolutely not, but you know, dressed up a little bit more diplomatically.

45:18Um he was very quick with that answer and uh you know, pretty firm, uh which seems to indicate that that Iran has basically evicted the US from the Middle East. Uh that which I think, you know, as an American taxpayer, I am not exactly upset about. If that means, you know, a couple dozen less bases that we have to subsidize in order to encircle some enemy of Israel, uh then that is really no sweat off my back, personally.

45:50Um what else did we discuss? Uh um I mean, it's a it's it's a pretty fascinating interview. It's also a mm a little unorthodox in the format. I was uh only able to get about about a half an hour with him.

46:08And that was we had originally scheduled a meeting for for after a his meeting at 7:00.

46:16I think the Iranians likely understood that in the next few days hostilities would probably spark up again. And so that that meeting lasted until about midnight. And then finally I had a chance and got a knock at the hotel room door that said, you know, if you're still awake, now's the time. It's now or never. And so I I jumped into action and filmed an interview in the backseat with this top Iranian official as he went from one side of Tehran to the other.

46:49And it's it's certainly one of the more interesting interviews I've ever filmed.

46:55I look forward to sharing that with our audience. And I'm I'm sure you guys will will enjoy watching it.

47:03He's very candid about his beliefs.

47:06Had quite a few jokes about about our president. And really told us that he he feels sorry for us to be led around by a man like Trump. I asked him to respond to several of the statements that have been circulating widely. One one which I think we may have also in the document when Trump basically confirmed the description by the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman who said that the US is acting like pirates. And then a few days later Trump says, well, yeah, we're like pirates. It's very profitable. He said word for word, we're like pirates. Here it is.

47:46Yeah. There was no reason. Turn your ship around.

47:50Evacuate your engine room immediately.

47:53And you saw these guys running out of there.

47:55Now, they're 5 miles away, and one shot into the engine room blew up the engine room. The ship stopped. It's different.

48:04They used tugboats, and then we landed on top of it. On top of everything else, we then land on top of it, and we took over the ship. We took over the cargo, took over the oil.

48:14It's a very profitable business. Who would have thought we were doing that?

48:16We're like pirates.

48:21Very profitable.

48:22>> not playing games, cuz you know, for 47 years Iran has been pushing everybody around. They're the bully And Yeah, Iran It's Iran.

48:30>> They're the bully. Who's the man invaded over the last 47 years versus the US?

48:35It's like, we're like pirates. We just stole all this oil, but they're pushing everybody around.

48:41My Trump impersonation sucks compared to my Obama.

48:45Yeah. Maybe he'll run for a third term.

48:49Maybe they both will.

48:50Well, well, it doesn't matter, and someone will inhabit their politics, and we're definitely >> Democrat or Republican, you know, it'll be the same. That's That's what I Which was Can you remind me who was the the ad- Obama advisor who basically says that they approve of Trump's war with Iran, and that there can never be any real negotiations with them?

49:17Uh The Israeli guy, Amos Hochstein, who is >> That's right.

49:21>> fought for Israel, not the US military, and was Obama's sort of Lebanon liaison envoy. Said, "We would have We supported what Trump was doing, but we just don't support the execution, which is the principal difference between uh the parties.

49:36So, uh I think the Azizi interview is going to be really significant. We're working on editing it.

49:43There It's It's technically difficult to edit, but I think it will be rewarding.

49:49He said he he felt sorry for us Americans that we're being led by someone like Trump.

49:56And uh >> You get the leader you deserve.

49:59Yeah.

50:00Um So, let me ask you about two major war crimes that you where you went to the ground and and went to the site of two of the worst US war crimes in recent memory. One of One of them was just historically possibly the worst US war crime, which was the bombing of the girl's school in Minab, Iran, in which close to 170 people were killed. 120 of them were school girls. Uh we won't have time to play the entire package, but you begin in a destroyed classroom. Here's your intro. The morning of February 28th began like any other.

50:41They had come to the school here to learn and to play.

50:45And just like our children in America, they had names and faces and hopes and dreams.

50:52But all of that was shattered when at 10:30 a.m. the US military launched a Tomahawk missile directly at them. The US Department of War struck directly in the center of the building, killing dozens of children instantly.

51:05The teachers who survived tried desperately to usher the children to safety. With many still trapped inside, adults and kids alike ran back in to rescue their friends and siblings.

51:17Outside, parents began to arrive and they started searching frantically for their children.

51:23That's when the US military hit the school with a second Tomahawk missile.

51:28In all, 155 people were killed.

51:31120 of them were children.

51:34Around me, you can see the results of American foreign policy first hand. This is what our leaders and the Israeli leaders have decided to do to the children of Iran in order to teach them a lesson.

51:53It is an unconscionable act and one which every thinking and caring person should endeavor to spend the rest of their life trying to prevent from ever happening again.

52:13Well, obviously that experience made a big impact on you as it would have on everyone. It's you know, every parent's worst nightmare.

52:20And uh hundreds of family members had to deal with the aftermath of this hideous crime.

52:31Two Tomahawk missiles striking a school.

52:35And you met some of those family members. Give us your impressions of that experience and what the family members of those murdered schoolgirls told you.

52:48It was probably the one of what was it was one of the worst days of my life. Just watching just experiencing that vicariously through through those poor parents who will never get to hold or hug or kiss their children ever again.

53:10Their children who will never get to grow up. Who will never get to live lives. Who will never get to fall in love. Who will never get to have children of their own.

53:18It's again, just what it's one of the worst things I I can imagine happening. And it didn't happen to just one family. It happened to over a hundred families. And in some cases families lost both of their children.

53:32Um uh there was a pair of uh siblings, Madi and Rehana, uh whose parents uh we can see in the in the footage, you see her mother throwing herself on the graves of Rehana and then caressing it.

53:54Their fingers showing the longing that she has for her child who she will never get to see again. And then she gets up and she has to do the same with another gravestone right next to it, her other child uh also taken from her. I was told that Rehana survived the initial blast uh and was outside the school and went back in because she said she had to find her brother. And neither one of them ever left.

54:25So, that was I mean, it's just beyond heartbreaking.

54:30It It took my breath away when I heard that and obviously, I I kind of broke down over and over again that day. It's just something There's something so deeply, deeply wrong about the loss of a child and about parents having to go through that and the You never recover from that. There's no coming back from it.

54:57So, to see that again enacted on not just one family, but on over a hundred uh was deeply, deeply distressing.

55:05And you know, if if you if you show the footage again right at the very beginning um in the first 10 seconds, there's an exterior shot of the school and you can see the windows of the upper floor.

55:22Uh you can see that they are charred black, that that there is soot uh coming out from the windows. And that was all of the windows of the building have this this sort of outline of black ash uh any of extending out from uh Yeah, just let this roll for for two more two or three more seconds and I think I think we'll see it here.

55:50Uh after this next uh shot of me, you can when when there's this exterior shot of the building.

55:57Um you're right there. Or well, yeah, I think I think we may have just passed Yeah, you can see there's and this it looks like smoke, but you can see the soot coming out um from the windows. And this was clearer on the um on the back side of the building. But all of that soot that's that's uh around the windows on the upper floors just kind of gives you a uh insight into into how powerful that blast was. It instantly incinerated many children.

56:34Um it was a huge fireball that is that that blasted throughout the building and then and then escaped through the windows, which was the only place that the heat and the energy had to leave.

56:45So, many of those children were instantly burned alive.

56:50Um and then when the follow-up strike happened minutes later that was uh it's it was it was described because me the media fixated on this and and the US government kind of tried to claim that oh, you know, we saw that people were approaching this IRGC facility.

57:15And so, we we just assumed that they were terrorists, right? And it's it's not it's a little bit like that infamous video where they I think they target it as collateral damage and they're targeting uh journalists in Iraq.

57:29And they they kind of made the point that oh, because people are sort of gathering, they must necessarily be terrorists together.

57:37Um that that was the line of thinking apparently.

57:42Uh I I suppose it's entirely possible that they had pre-programmed in some kind of strike package and all these missiles were going to be sent one way or the other, but to me it certainly seems like they deliberately targeted the people who gathered in order to send a message basically that we will kill anyone. We will kill whoever it is. Because again, this this attack happened within the opening salvo of the US-Israeli attack on Iran. This was uh within hours of the sneak attacks. Uh within hours of the the execution, the assassination in broad daylight of the leader of Iran, Sayyid Ali Khamenei. And uh who again, not not

58:34just the leader of Iran, but the spiritual leader for all Shia Muslims.

58:41I think that's also worth noting that this is what this wasn't just, you know, some uh mullah. This was a man widely beloved and respected by over 100 million Muslims, hundreds of millions of Muslims.

58:57Um and then and then to follow it up almost immediately with the brazen massacre of over 100 school children. I believe it was 73 little boys and 47 little girls was the the the figure that uh they ultimately arrived at and that was that was who uh whose graves I walked among uh outside of Minab.

59:27Um all of this just to say, this is the war that we're fighting, right? Uh, it's not a World War II style liberation war.

59:38Uh, it's not, uh, freeing the Iranians from some oppressive regime. It's murdering little kids in order to strike fear into the heart of an entire society. It's believe Trump when he says an entire civilization will die tonight.

59:56It's It's a crime against humanity. It has all the matching components.

60:03Uh, the Uh, murder and extermination of, uh, of an entire group of people, a systematic, widespread effort. According to the standard ICC definition that qualifies as a crime against humanity, not just a war crime.

60:24Uh, so people need to understand what we're talking about when we discuss the Manbij school massacre. Um, and I also want them to note that the US government still refuses to release its investigation into what happened. We know from people who have leaked information to the New York Times that it points to the US military being responsible, but they won't release it, presumably because it found that our government and our military carried out this horrible, horrible crime.

61:00Um, and I also want people to note that as soon as it became clear that the US was responsible, that this story basically disappeared from the news. No one in the West is talking about Manbij anymore. This horrible, horrible crime, which if Russia committed or the government itself committed, can you imagine? Uh we would never hear the end of it. But since the US was responsible, it's it's presumed to be an accident. Uh and it's basically covered up and not meant to be discussed in polite company.

61:36So, everything about this is just unconscionable.

61:42Uh and everyone involved in that strike should spend the rest of their life rotting in prison. Everyone involved in covering it up should be punished heavily as well. And everybody involved in the media manipulation in burying this story, uh would also ideally, you know, in a in a just world, would also uh be tried at The Hague as well.

62:08Well, the US regime has taken no responsibility for this. Uh their figureheads such as Pete Hegseth have made statements of intent to commit crimes against humanity. Trump has made statements of intent to commit genocide such as his vow to destroy an entire civilization. Here's Pete Hegseth on March 19th after this strike.

62:39Whoa, sorry.

62:41will be the largest largest strike package yet, just like overwhelming force applied with precision. And again today will be the largest largest strike package yet, just like yesterday was. As I've said from day one, our capabilities continue to build, Iran's continue to degrade. We're hunting and striking death and destruction from above.

63:03Death and destruction from above. I mean, I know we don't punish anyone in the US for actual war crimes because I mean and and and and and no one even speaks about these crimes from previous administrations because they're afraid they'll be tried for their own.

63:20I pointed out in my >> Yeah.

63:22tribute to Michael Parenti since he wrote um To Kill a Nation his most controversial work, which I called his bravest work, on the calculated US destruction of Yugoslavia that there were many statements at that time by Wesley Clark that sounded the supreme NATO commander that sounded exactly like Piet Hoekstra's statements, but about Yugo- Yugoslavia and attacking Serbia.

63:53Statements by Joe Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that sounded exactly like Donald Trump. You know, I was suggesting we blow up bridges. I was suggesting we blow up power stations, taking credit for blowing up Serbian power stations and infrastructure.

64:07That's mostly what the US did.

64:10And none of them went on trial.

64:12Blowing up refugee convoys.

64:15Depleted uranium. Another example of something that that that really I think they kind of tried out in the destruction of Serbia was the attack on journalists, right? Attack on >> Bombing of Radio TV Serbia.

64:33Uh 20 journalists were killed. It was a deliberate bombing and Wesley Clark said uh this was a command and control station for the Serbian military.

64:42So there's a lot of the >> what the Israelis say about the IRIB in Iran. And they blew up during the 12-day war last year in June 2025, they they blew up the IRIB headquarters in Tehran.

64:58And then the wreckage, the husk of a building was attacked by the Israelis again. This bombed-out non-existent building, they hit it again this year just I guess just to send a message. Uh but they hit it again on March 2nd and and then they claimed that it was an IRGC command structure.

65:20Uh so they used the exact same blueprint as what they laid out in the destruction of Yugoslavia. And just really quickly before I move off of Manama, but I I forgot to mention that the the US had come I mean we we've heard all these ridiculous excuses. First we heard the the narrative that was coming from Israeli bots and the Iranian Pallavist monarchist bots and and figureheads on social media. The first one was that uh this was the Iranian air defense malfunctioning.

65:58Uh which >> no, all the monarchists were denying it.

66:01Just Remember when when Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in northern Gaza and the doctors delivered a press conference surrounded by the corpses that had been slaughtered in on the grounds of this hospital. And instantly the Israelis released some grainy footage and claim it was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile because they're afraid the US was going to shut down the war and impose a ceasefire. Same thing happened here with Minab. And all the monarchists were saying, "Well, it was an an IRGC missile."

66:37Well, and then once when the video footage was produced and the fragments of the Tomahawk missiles were produced and shown on Iranian media, the narrative again shifted and then it became and this was what Trump himself vocalized was that Iran possessed Tomahawk missiles and that they blew themselves up with these non-existent Tomahawk missiles.

67:02>> And and so Matt Tardio attempted a OSINT analysis classic Tardio analysis.

67:10uh, showing it was actually, you know, a textbook Tomahawk missile that didn't resemble anything in Iran's stockpile of cruise missiles.

67:21Uh, He went full Tardio, and that's to be expected, but, uh, you know, I mean, the rest of these excuses were and they're still running with this excuse that it was an IRGC base. Yeah.

67:36Uh, and this is what I was told by every local who I discussed this with was that, okay, 20 years ago, that was that was the truth, but that this this base was shut down two decades ago, and that 15 years ago it reopened as, uh, civilian structures, and that there was a civilian, not IRGC related, which is this is the claim that's being produced to this day, in mainstream media reports, there was a civilian clinic in that compound that was struck.

68:11Uh, and and by the way, even if this had not been converted into a civilian structure 15 years ago when it reopened, uh, the school was outside of it. The school is outside of this complex. It's not within the limits of the uh, of the former and rehabilitated military infrastructure.

68:36Uh, which as I could see contained no military markings or, uh, you know, identifiers of any sort, uh, which made me believe these locals who had very little incentive to lie, um, and who were all horribly traumatized and not in any condition to coordinate some kind of massive, uh, deception campaign, even if they had been so inclined.

69:04So, every step of the way this has been pure deception on the part of US leaders and media um, and just every single lie adds insult to injury.

69:16And I think it's time for them to stop and just take a serious reckoning, take a look at the mirror at what they've done and who they are. And um, ask themselves seriously about, you know, if they're religious about where they want to spend the rest of eternity.

69:37Well, Hexeath is a demon worshiper.

69:40And uh, this is what the US military does. I mean, you point you drew a connection to the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, but many forgot forget that in 1991 the United States military bombed a civilian bomb shelter in Amadiya, Iraq and murdered over 400 people.

70:06So, this may have that may may have actually been a worse massacre than Minab.

70:12But, I you know, it's hard to debate, but something about targeting an elementary school and killing Yeah. mainly children um, makes it a I mean, so it's just for me personally, I guess we could debate, you know, the horrors of of American war crimes, but uh, this just to me to yeah. There's a long trail of bloodshed here.

70:38Yeah.

70:39What the the US military is not exactly liberating people.

70:44As Michael Parenti pointed out, the US military has never intervened on behalf of a progressive or revolutionary movement.

70:53And it has these this history of massacres that we can't forget.

70:57Uh the George H.W. Bush Library has an entire war crimes denial page on the Amadiyah massacre.

71:06And I assume the Trump library won't even acknowledge Minab. That's that's kind of the difference.

71:12I don't What did Bush say about the Downing of the um Iran Air 455 by the >> I will never apologize for the United States of America.

71:21>> care what the facts are. I will never apologize for the United States of America. We need Randy Credico. Saddam Hussein is a very bad man.

71:33But yeah, uh I'm not in Bush mode.

71:37I can do No, I mean I can do his shun much better. It's These people are evil.

71:41They have evil in their souls.

71:43But you saw, right, we've picked apart this uh sort of war justification document that the Trump administration published, which is just a very slightly edited rehash of an FDD of a Foundation for Defense of Democracies um uh web page.

72:04And it's all of these kind of tenuous connections to Iran. They include attacks by Hezbollah and by other people who they claim are Iranian proxies.

72:20Almost all of these deaths are American service members who were serving in overseas military adventures.

72:30Imagine for a second that Iran had assembled a document about the US crimes against its people. It would not be it would not be limited to Iranian military. It would be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of civilians. It would be, as you noted, the the casualties of Iran Air 290. It would be the little girls in Minab.

72:55It would be masses. It would be far more people and very few of them would have any military connection at all.

73:04So, you know, I know it's kind of ridiculous to talk about US double standards at this point. I think it's the mask is fully off.

73:14Obviously, they don't give a [ __ ] But but just just imagine for 1 second that Iran would take action on us. They would have far more legitimate of a casus belli to attack us and to do unspeakable things to us than we have ever had for them.

73:36Yeah, I mean, we've been terrorizing them for 47 years.

73:40And then before that Operation Ajax to remove Mohammad Mosaddegh as Iran's elected prime minister. So, elected president.

73:52Um the another another point I wanted to make though is on the same day that the US bombed the girl school in Minab.

74:01It tested for the first time that Lockheed Martin's new precision strike missile, a new cruise missile, and and blew up a girl's volleyball practice in Lamard Lamard, Iran, killing 21 people. Most of them were girls practicing volleyball. So, you know, where where's the Iranian you know, did Iran attack itself there?

74:30Where was the military facility near that volleyball practice? I mean, they're not they're not even able to explain what happened there. And this week, Jim Taiclet, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, described the war on Iran and the broader conflict that Trump and Israel have united ignited across the Middle East as a golden opportunity.

74:53That was during a shareholders meeting.

74:56So, these are the demons behind this attack.

75:01And they are walking among us and claiming that Iran is the aggressor.

75:06Nobody's buying it, by the way. The The US public is mostly not on board because they're being economically devastated. But, there are some of us who are also disgusted with this war because it's been a civilian slaughter and, you know, not to take this conversation too far. I mean, we've we've we've spent a lot of time on it, but you also visited another the site of another I would could say a war crime, but a very textbook kind of Israeli-style war crime in which the um I think it was the Israelis wanted to assassinate an Iranian general, so they blew up an entire apartment building in Tabriz. Uh we This hasn't been much

75:47acknowledged in Western media, but in order for Israel to assassinate Ali Larijani, uh the Iranian speaker, which was also a disgusting crime against a civilian official, they bombed five apartment buildings because they weren't sure which one he was in at the time.

76:08And scores were slaughtered.

76:11So, uh just quickly, I mean, what did you see there? You you met people who were killed just because they were family members of a general or happened to be neighbors of the general.

76:22Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, this was the strike which was carried out at midnight on the first night of Nowruz, which is the Iranian New Year.

76:34Um so, they targeted this Iranian general's home knowing full well that he would be home because everyone in Iran is home with their families.

76:48So, he the the decision was made, you know, we're going to take this guy out and we're going to do so at a time when he's going to be at home for sure with his entire family.

77:02And so, they took out this Iranian general and they killed his entire family with him, his entire immediate family.

77:11Every single one of them is gone now and we interviewed in the aftermath some of his extended family members and they were obviously shocked to their core. They expressed uh that they would never forgive or forget that this had been done to them. They do not want to negotiate with the United States or with Israel.

77:43They don't see them as humans and they don't see them as capable of uh of of negotiating at all. They don't see them as capable of diplomacy. You have to be human, you have to be willing to negotiate in good faith. None of these things seem to be the case when it comes to the United States and certainly not Israel.

78:08This is from your report from Tabriz.

78:11Here are the the family members.

78:15Uh completely invisible people in Western media. You see some members of the Iranian Red Crescent who are also who have also been targeted specifically by Israel, but also the US and uh you know, the Red Crescent rescuers are being targeted in double and triple tap strikes all across Lebanon.

78:39And I yeah, I remember a woman who you spoke to here at the site of this crime said, "I cannot see why our government should not negotiate with people who freely slaughter children." And she's holding up a photo of one of the children who was murdered in this strike. So, that's something that's important to remember here is it's not just this isolated school massacre. This is what's happening on a daily basis during the Ramadan war imposed on Iran for 39 days. Central Tehran was just being in assaulted. These were all civilian sites. You've been to Central Tehran.

79:16I've been to Central Tehran. It's a very densely populated place. And they'd say, "Oh, there's a military target here, an official IRGC official." And you're blowing up an entire apartment block.

79:26That's, you know, Israeli-style genocidal tactics.

79:30Yeah, I also um we we we'll get this report up soon, I'm sure, but uh I also reported from the Gandhi hospital, which was blown up >> which was blown up by uh the US and Israeli forces uh because they were targeting an IRIB transmitter station next door.

79:54And so, this massive hospital is just completely completely leveled. Uh all the walls are gone and all of the floors. It's a large tall building and it's completely blown out. It's one of the >> I'm going to show some of the CCTV footage from an Israeli hospital, a US-Israeli hospital attack in Iran while you talk.

80:18Well, it's the the Gandhi hospital is one of the main centers in Iran for fertility treatments. There are some 40,000 embryos that were being stored there, frozen there, uh that health authorities have had to desperately find stopgap measures to place them in in other facilities across the country. Um 40,000 women on hold who cannot have children in the meantime uh because the US and Israel decided that an IRIB, which is to say Iran's national organization, was destroyed.

81:00>> Sorry to interrupt, but you can see here a nurse rescuing children in the IC in the um in incubators. Uh but >> Yeah.

81:10That's powerful footage. She I think she grabs children two two at a time and she is racing back and forth trying to take them all to safety, as many as she can.

81:22These babies and children that the US and Israel simply have no regard for their life.

81:28Um that's just how they operate. It's standard operating procedure.

81:34These people have been demonized so relentlessly. Iran as a country has been demonized so relentlessly in US media since 1979.

81:44And it's only thanks to social media that the US public is able to see this and it's part of the reason why this war is so unpopular is uh It's disgusting. It just disgusts the average person who's capable of seeing this and Western media has not shown this footage. They'll call it Iranian propaganda.

82:05Why why are the LEGO videos hitting so hard? It's because they contain the ring of truth. People relate to it.

82:11Iran has truth on its side because Iran is being targeted. Iran had this war imposed on them.

82:19So uh you also went to the site of another hideous US war crime, which you know, in light of so many crimes has been almost forgotten and we'll be publishing footage of that. Um it's the attack on the B1 Bridge which was a major bridge under construction which would have been the largest bridge, I guess, in West Asia in the Middle East.

82:47>> The tallest and uh this was in Kashan and people were picnicking under the bridge at the time it was blown up. Oh, let's just blow up a bridge over people who are picnicking. Who cares? We we Trump has orders to destroy infrastructure.

83:01This is what it was the horror.

83:05This is the horror.

83:07Yeah.

83:13Who does this other than the US and Israel on this scale?

83:19Yeah. And the second video is I think that if you should if you look at the next video, you can see I think seven bunker buster bombs being being dropped.

83:30Um if this one is the same video I'm thinking of that repeats in slow motion.

83:38Yeah.

83:39Yeah. So, you can count them. One, two, three, four.

83:48Not done yet. Here comes some more.

83:52Um five, six, seven.

83:5710 bunker buster bombs dropped in a double tap strike on the B1 Bridge.

84:04Uh on Nature Day. So, that's why uh the 13th day of Nowruz is in Iran, it's considered Nature Day. It's a day when Iranians go out with their families and as you saw they put up tents.

84:19Uh so, they'll have a in case it rains or they want to eat in kind of a little shelter, they have their little tent. Um and they go out into see, you know, into nature, into beautiful areas.

84:32And the area surrounding this bridge is one of those places. I was told at least 2,000 people had came out had come out to that specific area uh on that day in order to enjoy the great outdoors with their families.

84:49And they were greeted again with another series of massive, massive uh missile strikes by the US. And this bridge was a huge undertaking.

85:05It uh construction began 7 years ago and it was had a total cost of, I was told, 3 trillion toman, which it's difficult to calculate the exact price in US dollars because the price uh or the cost of the Iranian currency, the value of the Iranian currency has fluctuated so much over the course of 7 years.

85:31But, it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

85:33It's uh a huge, huge undertaking, and I was told that at the time of its destruction it was not yet completed. It still had about a meter gap in the middle.

85:46Which is a fact that totally undermines the claim in Western media and by these governments that this was somehow a dual-use bridge. It was already It hadn't even been completed yet. How could it be uh serving military purposes?

86:03>> Dual use. Uh the mil- the military drove over the bridge, except nobody could drive over the bridge.

86:08>> Except no one could drive over the bridge. And let's not forget how many universities were bombed. So many universities were bombed by the US and Israel across Iran in order to destroy their knowledge base and they would always say dual use, dual use. Yeah.

86:24That's like >> I visited the Isfahan University of Technology uh where because it had an AI lab uh they were this was deemed dual use and therefore a justifiable target. Um I mean, if you if you apply that standard to American universities, the entire Ivy League would be a target. If you applied that standard to the school in the town where I grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia uh Virginia Tech, which has a massive drone program uh which is next door to the Radford Army Ammunition Plant which has a a plays a part in creating the accelerants for virtually all of these rockets that we're seeing dropped on

87:12these Iranian civilians.

87:14Um by that standard, my hometown uh would be wiped off of the map in a heartbeat and no one would be able to complain about it.

87:24Uh obviously, that's not something I want to see and for that reason and for many, many more, I wish that our government would stop blowing up schools and universities.

87:37Dual use.

87:38Stanford, CIA feeder network.

87:42Dual use, George Washington University across from the State Department.

87:48Dual use.

87:49Harvard University, which has made Jake Sullivan, genocide Jake, a Henry Kissinger fellow.

87:58Uh we could also call all these schools douche use probably because of the uh culture.

88:04But it Americans would freak out if a foreign military was bombing their universities.

88:11That's what's happening.

88:12>> unforgivable and you know, if somebody did min up to us, can you imagine? We would we would spend the next 100 years >> nuclear year immediately and the next 100 years wiping out any single person that the Vegas connection to it.

88:29Yeah.

88:30Imagine if Iran bombed a synagogue in the US.

88:34Well, we we bombed a synagogue in Iran, nobody cares.

88:40Their Jews don't matter.

88:42Yeah.

88:43>> So, we're going to look forward to those um those reports from you in the coming days.

88:53Uh Yep.

89:00We have uh yeah, your report from the B1 Bridge, your report from Gandhi Hospital, your interview with Abraham Abraham Azizi.

89:11Um yeah, you had an an incredible run and we're hoping you'll be doing more reporting from the region and special thanks to uh K. Pritzker, Yeah.

89:23>> our correspondent and sort of Swiss Army knife for the collaborations with you on editing your footage so quickly and getting it out. Uh the these are really high-quality reports. I'm I'm jealous that I couldn't be there, but you know, I had prior commitments here and I hope to get back out there.

89:45Uh unfortunately, it looks like we're heading into another round in which as I said, the US will not achieve any military objectives. It has no military objectives that it can possibly achieve. The US just claimed to have taken out six IRGC fast boats.

90:05Uh the IRGC denies this.

90:07It hasn't opened the Strait of Hormuz.

90:09Scott Bennett says the Strait of Hormuz is open or that the US controls it. It doesn't control it. They're just long markets. If Scott Bennett really believes this, then I look forward to seeing a video of him strapped to the front of a of an oil tanker making the trip himself.

90:28No, you know what Scott Bennett is going to do is he looks like he's primed to bail out the UAE which is getting hammered which got hammered and which now says is going to attack Iran. And it got hammered because it attacked Iran previously with drones and with jets.

90:50It was a participant in the in the last round of this war.

90:54And so we are going to bail out this corrupt undemocratic crooked monarchy for its own gambit to engage in the Epstein Accords. I mean the Abraham Accords and normalize with Israel and become the quasi Arab Zionist regime that has been pushing for a US ground invasion of Iran that is such a stooge that it removed itself from OPEC so it could continue to get aid from Donald Trump. We're going to pay for that. The US taxpayer, just as we paid to bail out Argentina so Javier Milei and his party could remain in power as they took a chainsaw to Argentina's public assets and its economy and are balkanizing the country on

91:47behalf of the US and Israel.

91:50We are going to pay for all of that.

91:54It's So, you know, you're watching Wyatt's reports and feeling the justifiable hatred for our leadership that you should feel with every fiber of your being.

92:07We are not a republic.

92:10We're not being led by leaders of a republic.

92:13They're stopping us from having a republic. This is the essence of empire that we are paying for them for the Lockheed Martin CEO, Jim Taiclet, to have a golden opportunity testing missiles to murder Iranian girls at volleyball practice.

92:31We are going to pay for a $1.5 trillion military budget that Donald Trump and Pete Kegsbreath have proposed. What is that money going to go to? It's not going to pay for US soldiers abroad. It's not going to pay for veterans of US wars who are homeless to have shelter or to have PTSD treatment or to get them Joe Rogan psychedelic drug gags to to help them with their trauma.

93:05It's not even paying for that. It's just paying the rich of our country. It's paying the Trump family who are now military contractors teaming up with Israeli firms to contract with the Pentagon. That's the essence of empire is our pockets are being raided. The Treasury is being looted to pay the imperial leadership. And Trump has lifted the mask on that. So, you should feel complete and total hatred and contempt for these vile figures.

93:39But Iranians understand that's not the American people.

93:43And that's why they're reaching out to us and asking us to do something to disrupt daily to to disrupt the status quo in the US. That's what an activist named Guido Reichstadter has just done at the Frederick Douglass Bridge, climbing this bridge across the Anacostia River to fly a black flag in protest of the US war on Iran and the Israeli war on Lebanon and the rise of an AI Skynet regime across the U- across the US is to just disrupt the status quo.

94:22Which Western media, corporate media, is seeking to maintain.

94:27Code Pink is out there now to show support for him. He's about to come down from the bridge, but he's been up there for 3 days. And so if there's anything you can do is just be disruptive about this war cuz it's about to start again.

94:42And uh, you know, I can't commend you enough, Wyatt, for for what you did out there. Uh, you didn't you went in there not knowing whether the war is going to start again, whether you were putting your physical safety at risk. At the last minute you brought in a flak vest and a helmet. And uh, you know, what you did was what the what what Western corporate media has failed to do. And no one's stopping them from going in and showing these war crimes.

95:08But you you went and did that and that's what we that's what our mission is here at the Gray Zone. And you all who have supported us, supported Wyatt to be out there, um, you know, we're covering all his costs.

95:22So we will have more uh, from Wyatt from Iran and from the field, wherever else you go in the region.

95:32Yeah, just want to say I am uh, honored and incredibly grateful to be able to be out here showing everybody what it's like on the other end of the sword and I'll continue to do that as long as I'm able and as long as uh, you guys at home keep supporting us, it's it's important to be able to show this firsthand. I think it's really one of our only weapons in this new war on the truth. So, thank you very much Max.

96:07Thank you very much everybody watching and I will see you guys soon, I'm sure.

96:13All right. Well, Wyatt, yeah, we'll definitely have you back to talk about this more and we'll again be featuring your interview with Abraham Azizi today and further reports.

96:26Um All right. Take care of yourself out there. We'll be in touch.

96:31Will do. Peace.

96:32>> Later, Max.

96:33All right. Well, here is um Just I mentioned Guido Reischstadter and his dramatic protest in Washington, D.C.

96:44climbing the Frederick Douglass Bridge.

96:46Here's some video of that.

96:49Before we bring in our next segment.

96:55He actually had to take his shoes off cuz he was sliding down the bridge.

97:00There he goes.

97:02This is footage by Ford Fischer, man on the scene pretty much everywhere.

97:13And he made it to the top and stayed there for 3 days to protest the war in Iran.

97:19As I mentioned, Code Pink is there now.

97:24Um and you know, anyone in the Washington, D.C. area who can get to the Frederick Douglass Bridge now to show support, it's time to disrupt the status quo.

97:38They couldn't get him down.

97:40He's just coming down cuz he has to eat.

97:47And uh we have a good friend with us, Aaron Maté, to uh with you know, cover we have a lot to cover.

97:57Aaron, how's it going?

97:59How's it going, Anya? I just want to um share the warm sentiments and appreciation to Wyatt for going to Iran, seeing what it's like on the other side of the guns, and issue a PSA. Like, I'm sure Wyatt's available for interview if any if any Western outlets, especially progressive outlets, want to interview him. Like, for some people the gray zone has cooties. Like, they they they treat media like a schoolyard, but maybe a guy who goes to Iran in the midst of a war, films from the scene, as we saw Esfahan, the down plane, the school massacre in Minab, the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, this is important

98:37stuff. And so, I hope Wyatt isn't interviewed just on The Gray Zone. As great as the interview was, I hope more people will speak to him. That's uh as as and the and those who've gone before him, um Dimitri, and uh And Ahmed. And Ahmed, who went. And Bushra Shaikh, if you know her, she's British. She's also gone to Iran. Yeah.

99:00I mean, there are people who've gone on the ground and and you know, collected testimony from people victimized by uh this bombing campaign. And so, it's important to hear their voices. And so, I'm grateful to Wyatt for what he did.

99:15Yeah, I we got the exclusive with Wyatt, but it wasn't hard to do.

99:20I don't think anyone else has been many there haven't been other outlets that I know of reaching out to him, but they will, I'm sure.

99:28And he was in Iran moving around a lot with very spotty Wi-Fi. So, I I actually waited till he was in Istanbul and would have reliable Wi-Fi.

99:41So, yeah, Wyatt's available for interviews.

99:44I feel like I'm doing a bachelor auction for Wyatt.

99:49The Grayzone bachelor auction.

99:51We're going to have like the Grayzone Chippendales calendar.

99:57That would not be a best seller. That would not be a best seller. But, yeah, um but Well, I have like one, yeah, one >> really moving, especially his dispatch from the Manbij school. That was incredibly moving and uh you know, it's one thing to uh you know, document these horrors from afar, but to go up close and to you know, see it for yourself. I'm sure that was a very uh just a difficult experience. And so, I'm really grateful for him to him for doing that.

100:28Yeah. And I think we covered Project Freedom, Trump's ha- hairbrained scheme to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which seems to just be a trigger point for reigniting conflict. There's no way they're going to be able to open the Strait of Hormuz through this scheme, especially when they're not willing to openly declare that they're going to escort them directly, which would bring more fire on those ships. But, I don't know if you have any take on Trump's announcement.

101:04I just think Trump is trying to delay uh having to do anything.

101:11The idea of him making a deal with Iran, forget it. Like, this administration is like it's not capable of diplomacy with Iran. You can see that in Trump's comments how uh over the weekend and you referenced this that they haven't paid enough of a price for their 47 years of of mayhem. Which, first of all, A, if anyone has a case against uh someone else for 47 years of mayhem, it's Iran against the US for, you you uh nearly five decades of terror from supporting Saddam Hussein as he killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iran to shooting down an Iranian passenger jet to the murderous sanctions that have

101:46crippled Iran's economy. You can go you know the the dirty war in Syria which is designed to bleed Iran. You can go on and on and on. But first of all, that's not a reason to go to war just because you have grievances against a country going back you know five decades and again the US doesn't even have a case there. But the idea of this administration staffed by people like Steve Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner you mentioned earlier they just Steve Witkoff just hired a staffer from the Israeli lobby group the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Forget it. A deal is not going to happen. So I

102:18think Trump is just stalling for time.

102:20He also doesn't have a military solution to the Strait of Hormuz.

102:24So I think what we're just looking at is just perpetual stalling in this frozen conflict. Maybe some skirmishes here and there.

102:31Uh but returning to major combat to to liberate quote unquote the Strait of Hormuz. That's not going to happen either because he can't. He's lost that battle.

102:40Yeah, which raises the question can Iran enact a toll system that will pay for reconstruction as a means of compensating for sanctions and an endless blockade which aims to starve Iran of assets in order to provoke some kind of Syria scenario and cause internal instability and desperation. Can they do that? I think that's the the answer.

103:08That's Iran's way out of the sanctions regime. And in the near term will Iran allow the US to even rebuild its bases in the Gulf which will can A new CNN investigation tells us what we all already knew which was that most of those bases have been totally destroyed.

103:31Again, this is empire. We paid for those bases.

103:35Those radar systems cost billions of dollars and they've all been destroyed because Trump launched a crazy war for Israel, an imperial war for Israel.

103:46It's all wasted. All those assets are gone. And they should have never been there in the first place. They were just there to prop monarchies that are providing us with oil, which is also going to be wiped out through the destruction of LNG facilities and oil fields. Here's that CNN report. I'm going to take a 1-minute break and, you know, I think this is pretty illustrative of the massive defeat that the that US empire has just suffered.

104:20And it's coming from CNN.

104:23American soldiers enjoying a karaoke night at one of the biggest US military hubs in the Gulf.

104:29That was then.

104:31This is now. A once-bustling American micro city in the desert nearly empty and heavily damaged after a weeks-long barrage of Iranian missiles and drones.

104:42One of many US military facilities in the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula targeted by Iran even as the US and Israel pummeled the Islamic Republic's large arsenal.

104:53So, what impact have Iran's strikes had on America's footprint in the Middle East? A CNN investigation found evidence of unprecedented destruction. We can reveal that strikes damaged at least 16 US installations across eight countries.

105:08According to our analysis and sourcing, that's the majority of American military positions in the region and some of them are virtually unusable now.

105:17A US source familiar with the situation told us that they'd never seen anything like this at American bases, that these were rapid, targeted strikes using its technology.

105:27Iran's main targets multi-million dollar aircraft like this Boeing E-3 Sentry, which gave the US a huge amount of visibility over the Gulf.

105:37It's out of production and in today's money it's worth nearly half a billion dollars.

105:43Critical communications equipment. Look at these giant golf balls. They're known as radomes and they protect satellite dishes vital for data transmission.

105:52In this space alone, Iran destroyed all but one of the radomes less than a month into the war.

105:59So, the golf balls are gone.

106:01Uh that the US has been blinded in many ways. That's why they're the early warning systems are gone when Iranian ballistic missiles come in. This is a very methodical campaign by Iran.

106:15Uh CNN acknowledges that Iran may have actually launched a Chinese satellite system, which means the US faces an adversary for the first time that has very clear reconnaissance satellite photos of the targets it's attempting to hit.

106:32It's It's It's This This is This is a document of defeat.

106:38US defeat. And Iran is slowly beginning to proclaim victory. The next phase is to gain permanent control over the strait through a toll system and and alt and then begin to sort of alter Western financial hegemonic control by paying for reconstruction through its own means including charging ships in Chinese yuan.

107:04Which would be I think like a final defeat and make Iran a world power. Um that That That's a That's a longer term scenario.

107:16Um and in the near term as Aaron as you mentioned like Trump is just biting for time and doesn't actually have a clear strategy. Maybe he thinks he's going to pressure Iran here into making a worse deal, but there will be no deal.

107:30Well, you compare what Iran hit, which is US military bases, and yes, a couple of hotels where US officials put soldiers to stash them away and use the hotel workers and guests as human shields. So, you compare what Iran hit, which is military targets, to what Trump hit, which is civilian targets. Maybe yes, I'm sure yes, he bragged about sinking the Iranian navy and its air force, which wasn't much of an air force to begin with, but you look at the main target inside Iran and it's industry, it's infrastructure, all those schools that you and Wyatt talked about the US blowing up under the fake claim

108:08that it's dual use. And even if it were dual use, of course, they wouldn't have the right to be hit by the US cuz Iran wasn't a threat to the US, but you know, petrochemical plants, steel factories, bridges, I mean, the US went after Iran's economy.

108:24Iran went after the US military.

108:26And so, the contrast is just so stark.

108:28Iran doesn't even have missiles that can hit the US.

108:32Yeah.

108:33Their missiles can hit US military bases that surround it, but Iran can't even hit the US. So, like the disparity between what the two countries targeted, it's just a completely different galaxy.

108:43And that's the Trump strategy.

108:45It's okay, regime change, that didn't work, but then let's just destroy what we can of this country's infrastructure.

108:52And if he resumes the kinetic phase again, that's exactly what he'll resume bombing is Iran's civilian infrastructure, industries, you know, I don't know how many Iranians lost their jobs as a result of Trump's war, but it's in the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. And that's what he's counting on is the country just being so impoverished that it can't fight back and the people, you know, turn on the government, which of course has not worked. It If anything, we've seen the opposite effect.

109:19I think that, you know, yeah, you you make a good point. Iran has not been killing masses of civilians in the Gulf states. The number is very low. It's been hitting bases. That's now clear.

109:30It's been hitting US military targets.

109:33That could change, although they don't want to target the civilians, especially in a place like Bahrain, where the civilian population hates the leadership, the Al Khalifa dictator and is on the verge and it seems at times on the verge of overthrowing it.

109:50This this fake country, which was set up by the British, would be basically decolonization in real time.

109:58But if the US-Israeli coalition resumes its attacks on Iranian infrastructure, Iran will attack desalination plants and retaliate in a just totally justifiable tit-for-tat way by attacking oil infrastructure. And this will be the end of these Gulf dictatorships because it will be extremely hot.

110:23People won't be able to have their air conditioning.

110:26The Dubai model, in which foreigners, wealthy foreigners, pay zero taxes, will be destroyed. Scores and scores of hotels in Dubai are already closing. You don't hear a lot about it because people are so afraid of telling the truth. Uh and, you know, expats who want to go back there won't say anything on social media.

110:45Ev- the, you know, local Emiratis are terrified of talking about this. Bahrain has just declared a state of emergency.

110:53It's on the verge of collapse.

110:55And if the US and Israel start um these decapitation strikes again, assassinations of Iranian leadership, what could Iran do then? Assassinate the monarchs.

111:10Mohammed bin Zayed becomes the target.

111:12The Al Khalifa family becomes becomes a target. Their defense ministries become targets. It's tit-for-tat and it's not me saying this. It is a member of the Iranian negotiation delegation that was in Islamabad who's openly saying this is what will happen next. This is the price.

111:32Well, this is in Farsi Farsi speakers will understand this.

111:38Farsi speakers This is how Mohammed Morandi summarized it. Iranian MP and member of the negotiation delegation Mahmoud Nabavian states that if Iranian leaders are assassinated in any attack, all of the complicit despots in the Persian Gulf will be killed and their palaces destroyed.

112:00So, I think there's more that Iran can do here and Trump doesn't seem to understand this. He also is avoiding democratic accountability in the US.

112:15Um after the Vietnam War, a new rule was imposed by Congress that the president after 60 days of conflict has to go back to Congress for authorization.

112:29And what is Trump is saying is project freedom is just a humanitarian gesture.

112:34Those are his words, a humanitarian gesture which means that the conflict has not restarted. He's using all kinds of deceptive language to avoid congressional authorization, to avoid basically abiding by the Constitution.

112:51It's a deeply undemocratic war that's being waged.

112:55Pete Hegseth said that after the ceasefire was signed after 39 days, that put the war on pause. Yes.

113:02No, the US is still at war. So, they're violating the Constitution. They're violating violating a long-standing congressional rule in order to restart a conflict which they claim has not begun again.

113:15It's just a gigantic lie.

113:19Uh it's I've never seen someone make this argument before that because uh the war has been on pause and then therefore the war began more than 60 days ago, then that means that like the clock resets and you don't have to go seek congressional authorization.

113:34Uh it's a it's a novel argument.

113:37Whoever came up with it deserves a creative writing award and not a legal one, but that's what they're going with. And but Trump has to deal with gas prices now at a four-year high.

113:48Uh you have more Republican lawmakers who are hearing from their constituents that this is not good. They're worried about their re-election. Trump has to listen to them as much as he tries to make everything about himself.

113:59He has to at least pay attention to the fact that, you know, members of his own caucus are now saying that this is threatening their their re-election. So, he's in a bind, but he doesn't have any answers cuz he's not willing to say to admit that he lost, that he failed, and he's not willing to defy Israel yet.

114:14At least not publicly. So, he's just stalling for time and coming up with um new fake claims of this new operation to to free the straight even though he he's not even do he's not even going to try to actually send in ships to fight Iran.

114:30So, he's in a bind and so now we're just in a waiting game to see how long he can stall for time. Stall for time for. And and these were such revealing comments by Trump about his priorities and how lost he is, how politically lost he is.

114:44I love I love the background here, golden years.

114:51Hold on.

114:54That's that sense. Look at this. I'm I'm talking about all these things you're getting and you stand up when I talk about you can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. We can't. But I I did something that was I don't know, foolish, brave, but it was smart. I would do it again, but I thought the numbers would be much worse.

115:11I thought Uh I thought it was foolish, brave, could have been could have been smart.

115:17I mean, whoever says I did something that was foolish and just launched this war, it shows how careless he is. Now, listen to what he says next.

115:24The stock market would go down much more. I thought the oil prices would go up much more. I said, "But we have no choice. Whether it does or doesn't, I have to do what's right."

115:34It's nonsense. Look at this. So, oil prices, when he said that, were at the highest level since COVID. We're like $108 a barrel.

115:49The uh you know, inflation rates are surging.

115:55S- Stock mark- stock market was It was another stock wipeout.

116:00And he's saying that it he thought it would actually be worse, but he would have done it anyway, and that he did it just because it was the right thing to do.

116:09But he never made the case to the American public before February 28th about why he had to attack Iran.

116:18The entire decision was made in a situation room meeting where Netanyahu sat at the head of the table, and Trump sat to the side, and Netanyahu and his Mossad director dictated to Trump, and Trump followed their orders to stage a surprise decapitation attack. And now he's saying, "Well, he thought it would actually be worse than it already is."

116:43That shows just how demented he is.

116:48And you know, his own base is getting hammered.

116:52The I think, you know, the key here is fertilizer costs are surging. So much fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

117:01And the costs are surging so much that you know, farmers in Asia, Africa, Europe are going to be hit extremely hard and will just some of them won't even have fertilizer.

117:17But in the US, I mean, this is eating into Trump's base in the heartland.

117:23The agricultural producer base that sent Trump back to office. My family's farmed for 100 years. You don't want to be the one that that can't keep it going, you know? I am a Republican. I voted for this administration, but my patience is running thin. We're here in the heart of the Mississippi Delta to talk with farmers about how the war with Iran is impacting them. Oh, it's it's been awful. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is causing prices to skyrocket.

117:49Things like diesel fuel and fertilizer.

117:51>> We're buying a a little bit at a time.

117:53But sometimes we we know that we've only got two weeks of fuel. So, what has happened to us is not just the impact of one year. We have lost customers forever. They will never come back because we're deemed an unreliable supplier.

118:07>> I'm paying 60% more for diesel fuel than I would have been paying 45 days ago.

118:12You got to have diesel for everything.

118:13You got diesel to disk, to plant, to harvest. So, diesel steadily going up like this, man, it affects us bad.

118:19>> You have no choice, you know, you've got to go ahead and buy it, no matter what the price is.

118:24So, they can't afford diesel, they can't afford fertilizer, they're completely screwed, and then we all pay the price in food prices at a time when inflation is surging. But Trump thought it would actually be worse. You know, I have the answer for these farmers. Let's just bring in the Israelis who made the desert bloom, right?

118:42Right, the you know, Israel like before Israel came into Palestine, it was all just desert, and then all the ingenious Israelis, this is like the Israeli myth goes, just made the desert bloom. So, to compensate for, you know, these farmers who just can't get by cuz they don't know how to uh you know, work the land like the Israelis do. Well, I just bring in the Israelis because after all, this whole war is for them.

119:03So, the Israelis surely have the answer to uh the woes that they've caused for American farmers. Yeah.

119:09What did the Israelis do? Oh, yeah, they took over all of the orange groves in Jaffa and kicked the Palestinians out and made it bloom. That worked out well.

119:19>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh unfortunately, that that indigenous teaching is not really transferable transferable to the US because there's no more land to colonize here. So, I don't know. The Israelis have to come up with some other idea to fix the woes that they caused, the mess that they caused.

119:34But it's just Yeah. Um Trump has to be getting this message despite the you know, like insular shell he has around him. Some of this has to be sneaking through. And he's got no answers whatsoever. Absolutely none.

119:50I mean, uh you know, he I actually think he's he is he believes his own [ __ ] If you judge from his late-night AI slop binges, he really believes that he has all the cards.

120:12This is a I mean, I I I feel like this is something like a late-night like Jimmy Kimmel could do this. Like, we don't need to do this at the Gray Zone.

120:21But it's gotten to the point where there's pretty much nothing else to say about Trump. He is a late-night liberal blue and on punchline.

120:31Like, blue MAGA turns out to be kind of right. The turbo lib boomers are basically right.

120:37>> Yeah.

120:38Uh except about the part uh that negotiating with Russia's wrong.

120:44Well, and they were even right that he's a foreign asset doing a foreign power's bidding. They just and doing the bidding of their oligarchs. Again, it's just the wrong passport. It's Israeli, not Russian.

120:55Yeah, Rachel Maddow said he's waging war for Qatar or something. We can't talk about what's staring us in the face. Yeah.

121:03Donald Trump doesn't even know how Uno works.

121:08If you are holding six wild cards in Uno, you're losing.

121:13You What an idiot.

121:16So, you know, you're not supposed to have all the cards in Uno. Again, that's like a That could be like a Jimmy Kimmel joke. It's not like um you know, doing I'm on the I'm on the uh I mean, mocking Trump at this point, it's like too easy.

121:34But, it really highlights the mentality that is animating this war and extending the conflict.

121:44This is what Donald Trump has been up to while he Anya just texted me and asked when I've ever played Uno.

121:55You know, high school was junior and junior high were boring. Yeah, it's been a long time for me.

122:02Um but, you know, This is Trump.

122:05This is at the the Doral golf course.

122:07Oh my They 20 million-dollar gold statue of himself pumping a fist. Oh my god.

122:17I mean, That's tedious.

122:20he's focused on this while the F like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is devising his war plans.

122:29He's going on late-night AI binges that are so bizarre.

122:39And here's one of his paid influencers.

122:40This guy's one of the most pathetic mega bootlicker influencers, Eric Daughtry.

122:45Trump posted this image of himself chilling in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Marco and JD are there, too. Liberals can't stand seeing this.

122:54No, like any rational person who lives in the United States would reel in horror that this is what the president is doing.

123:04And Donald Trump has many pools on his property. When have you ever seen Donald Trump with his shirt off in a single photo in a pool?

123:16It's really >> Never. Never. You'll never see Donald Trump with his shirt off in a pool.

123:20Is that Nancy Mace, by the way? I have no idea. It's really amazing the contrast >> Burgham?

123:26It's really amazing the contrast between Trump's first term and his second term.

123:30Like Trump had it so good in his first term. His opposition was obsessed with their conspiracy theories, he's controlled by Putin. Yeah. They were like a a walking caricature every single day.

123:42And of course, any he won as a result. I mean like Democrats just wasted his entire first term. In his second term, though I mean, Trump is just he's the tables have turned and now he's the caricature.

123:54He's he's the buffoon that they all said he was in his in his first term.

123:59But the one thing that's keeping him somewhat afloat, or not not the one thing, but one thing that helps him is Democrats still haven't seized the moment. Like they could be organizing big rallies around >> Yeah. the rising cost because of the war in Iran. But even we saw recently with with the No Kings rallies, there was like still some hesitancy to really call out the war and to connect as that video we just saw from More Perfect Union did, you know, the high cost of war to you know, the fact that Trump is hurting farmers and and his own base. There's still some reluctance to do that.

124:30And that speaks to the broader sort of demobilization that's happened since the Obama era. When Obama won on a surge of anti-war sentiment and then shut all that down and Democrats haven't gone back to that ever since when right now would be a golden opportunity.

124:44That's why No Kings attracts primarily gray-haired boomers.

124:49The turbo lib boomers who who, you know, obsess over all of the kind of neocon oriented conspiracies like Russia gate and are still sort of detoxifying themselves from that era and can't quite get out of it.

125:05Even though they would naturally oppose this war. The whole concept of No Kings to me was to kind of water down the more progressive and anti-war instinct of the grassroots base of the old Democratic Party. The grassroots base that marched against the Iraq wars the Iraq war of George of George W. Bush which really weakened George W. Bush and drove his approval ratings into the low 20s.

125:36That's all gone and No Kings it just prevents any coherent anti-war protest from taking place. Then anti-war groups and progressive groups have to enter into this giant mass of every Democrat oriented issue and march alongside people with Trump Russia signs in order to get their message out there and it doesn't really break through.

126:00The this is a No Kings is run by Democratic operatives who are sponsored by who else? Soros and Open Societies and you know, they're they're not exactly anti-war veterans.

126:18So there's you know, you have Guido Reichstadter climbing the Frederick Douglass Bridge and staging this dramatic protest but the Democrats aren't aren't exactly sending their base out to support him. Okay. They're afraid of that. Especially Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, APAC, Shakur. Yeah.

126:36Chuck Schumer, uh, we talked about Amos Hochst Amos Hochstein, the uh, Biden envoy to Lebanon declaring on, uh, was it Fareed Zakaria or Christiane Amanpour? I can't remember which.

126:50That, uh, you know, he would have supported attacking Iran. They just The problem is in the execution. That's always the Democrats' problem. Yeah, he said if Biden had a second term, they would have done midnight hammer, the strike that they did last June. Uh, he said that they were even talking about that in the Biden administration.

127:06>> Um, you know, let me show you this, too.

127:08This is, uh, Richard Nephew. Now, Max, you you've written about him. Uh, he wrote that book called The Art of Sanctions, which you dubbed The Art of Sadism, because Richard Nephew, an architect of the sanctions on Iran during the Obama era, he bragged about raising the price of food for ordinary Iranians during a holiday season and just what a success he thought that was.

127:29Uh, here he is and then he served under Biden again and he he he helps explain why under Biden there was no return to the JCPOA, even though members of the Biden administration negotiated the JCPOA under under Obama, but you have a wing, people like Richard Nephew, Amos Hochstein, they were the dominant ones under Biden and so therefore there was no return to the deal. So anyway, here Richard Nephew writing recently in Foreign Affairs, he admits that basically US sanctions which he helped design on Iran are the cause of all of Iran's problems. This is what uh, he says. Um, and he says, "Comprehensive sanctions released for

128:05Iran would help flood the country with enough money to overcome its legacy of mismanagement, corruption, and and failed governance. In doing so, it might relieve popular pressure on the regime."

128:17So he's admitting that all the problems that we, you know, blame on Iran, its corruption, mismanagement, and so forth, that if the US sanctions were lifted, all those problems would go away. So, he's acknowledging the US sanctions are the main cause of Iran's problems. But, that's why he opposes lifting those sanctions cuz it would relieve popular pressure on the regime. So, the answer then is to keep putting pressure on the people by denying them the right to have an economy because if we relieve that pressure, then they won't pursue regime change according to our dictates. So, that's Richard Nephew and that's another

128:50reason why it's so difficult to have a change of policies because Trump's policies have a strong bipartisan base of support.

129:00Yeah, that's why I call it the US regime.

129:02The Democrats under Biden the Democratic foreign policy establishment opposed a deal with Iran.

129:09And opposes then because they oppose sanctions relief. Any deal would require sanctions relief.

129:15Iran never got sanctions relief in any meaningful way from the JCPOA.

129:20And it's because of the mentality of people like Richard Nephew who can never accept an independent sovereign state in the middle of Eurasia.

129:30They're only They're They These are figures who are trained to dictate to other countries, to terrorize their people in order to impose US total hegemony on the globe moving all the way towards a pivot with Asia that will eventually break China. And they're living in a fantasy world at this point.

129:52So, I think Iran finally recognizes They They learned the hard way that the US only understands force. The This US regime, not the American people has The US regime has very little popular support.

130:05And by the way, the one guy under Biden who like favored diplomacy with Iran and restoring the JCPOA was Rob Malley. And what happened to him? What happened to him under Biden?

130:13>> Biden approved of his prosecution.

130:16He got basically framed by someone else in the Biden administration.

130:20And I have some guesses as to who, for you know, leaking classified information to Iran, which is total BS. And so he was taken off of his job and he got basically put on leave pending investigation. So, the one guy who like tried to do his job of diplomacy with Iran, his own colleagues in the in the Biden administration sabotaged him with a fake classified documents case.

130:44Who do you think set him up?

130:46I have some guesses, but you know, it wouldn't be you know, like it basically it's people like Richard Nephew and Anne-Marie Slaughter and Tony Blinken.

130:54Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan. Tony Blinken, Tony who went to high school with with Rob Malley and they used to debate back in the day because Really?

131:02Oh, yeah. Yeah, they went to high school in Paris together.

131:07And Blinken Blinken was a lifelong Zionist and so they used to debate the Israel-Palestine issue when they were kids and so they brought that feud into the Biden administration and of course Anthony Blinken won that won that round resoundingly.

131:22I love that we have a had a had a Frenchman as our Secretary of State.

131:27Who's been replaced by a gusano. Yes.

131:30Who doesn't even like go to the negotiations. He goes to UFC fights instead.

131:36Because the negotiations are like such a sham.

131:41Uh so so so Trump has no strategy.

131:47He's playing three-dementia chess. He's focused on turning the reflecting pool on the National Mall into a um casino style Mar-a-Lago style blue pool American flag blue. He's literally dying the reflecting pool.

132:09This is like you know, when you heard about like Saddam Hussein's palaces, his giant palaces. This dictator went mad making his palaces gold while the people starved and that's why we have to bomb them. This is what Trump is up to.

132:23It's not going to reflect. Blue doesn't reflect well. It's you know, darker a darker more natural tinge of water reflects better. This is going to cost $20 million. The taxpayers we the US taxpayers are paying for this.

132:41This is what he's focused on.

132:44And the people who are running his policy on Iran the expert class are people like Karim Sadjadpour.

132:55Uh this is Speaking of water.

132:58Speaking of water.

132:59And they're what they have done is they've successfully convinced Trump that after Iran has forcefully repelled and hit back hard against the full weight of the US and Israeli militaries seeking to impose regime change, destroy its nuclear stockpile that Iran is weak and vulnerable. It's weaker than ever. Karim Sadjadpour is like the main Beltway expert uh native informant.

133:32And quite as kept, he's very close to the monarchist lobby.

133:36He appears at events of NIFTY which is the de facto think tank of Reza Pahlavi which is calling for a US Israeli takeover of Iran, a breakup of Iran, the full theft and sell-off of Iran's public assets and oil and mineral wealth to Western investors. It's called for a Mossad purge of Iranian politics after the takeover. He speaks at their events all the time, but he hides behind this Carnegie Endowment fellowship where he was like working alongside Matt Duss for a while.

134:11And he testifies before Congress constantly.

134:15He's the main Iranian-American voice on all of the Sunday shows.

134:22Uh Fareed Zakaria loves him. He's always on NPR. He has a basically a column at the Atlantic. And he finally, you know, exposed himself as the dolphin guy in order to convince Trump that Iran was so weak that Trump could go in for another round. Here he is with uh CNN's Kaitlan Collins. have them go dark and still deliver that oil to China. I mean, there's a physical blockade. They They literally cannot do that right now. This is a physical blockade. They're not able to to send their oil and the resources to to to China. And vast majority of their oil exports were going via sea. To give you a sign of the

135:05desperate measures they're contemplating, The Wall Street Journal reported today that they're contemplating measures like suicide dolphins. You know, dolphins equipped with mines to try to go after US ships.

135:17So, that's not a That's not a measure which projects real strength.

135:22Wait, I'm sorry. You have to How would that even work? So, this is been discussed in the past by Iranian regime.

135:29>> You can't tell if she thinks he's the clown or she thinks Iranians are crazy.

135:34But I think I think she actually doesn't like is starting to see that this guy's like a sleazy used car salesman who should probably like have a Bluetooth earpiece in his ear while he speaks and like a few gold chains. That, you know, >> They want to strap bombs to dolphins.

135:49>> with with mines to to go after US ships.

135:52Now, that's that's a pretty crazy uh asymmetric tool. But this is some of the measures that are being reported right now.

136:00I mean, do you think that they could actually try If they actually tried that, what would that say about their desperation?

136:06Well, this is something that they've thrown out in the past to show the various options they have at their disposal. But again, this is not a show of a country which which is strong. You don't contemplate those kinds of measures when you're strong.

136:22What a fraud. What a complete and total fraud. Like Iran has just devastated most US bases in the region, and he he wants us to believe that they're going to resort to suicide dolphins because they're so desperate. I'm so sick of this guy being taken seriously. He's actually a CNN Global Affairs Analyst.

136:41Like he's on CNN's payroll, it appears.

136:45And early on in Trump's bombing campaign against Iran, he said that this is a rare case where the majority of the population supports the bombing. He went on CNN to assert on behalf of Iranians that they want to be bombed by Trump because he supports this regime change campaign.

137:01And now that it hasn't worked out, he has to be basically be a suicide dolphin and embarrass himself so much uh by resorting to such desperate claims such as this. So in this context, he's the suicide dolphin. He's desperate for anything that can prop up the narrative. So that's what he's resorting to, suicide dolphins.

137:21Karim Sadjadpour will be forever known as the dolphin guy. That just cuz you know, most people aren't going to remember his name.

137:30He's the dolphin guy. And he's citing the Wall Street Journal, which you know, they're which is run their Middle East bureau has been run by a bunch of Zionist frauds as well.

137:45This is the Wall Street Journal bureau chief who cooked up the suicide dolphins story, uh Benoit Faucon.

137:53Iran is grasping for a solution to an American blockade it can't break.

137:58Uh and the first line is that Iran Iranian officials say Tehran could use previously unused weapons to attack US warships from submarines to mine-carrying dolphins.

138:09Well, we're seeing them hit some tankers today.

138:12And you know, Flipper was not harmed in any of those incidents.

138:18But here's a previous Benwa Falcon hits from Venezuelan gangs and how Venezuelan gangs and African jihadists are flooding Europe with cocaine.

138:30Okay.

138:32I guess we got to blow up some Venezuelans on boats, right? Yeah, that was right around the time Trump started doing that.

138:39Iran helped plot the October 7th attack on Israel over several weeks.

138:44The IRGC gave the final go ahead last Monday in Beirut. Complete completely bogus story. Iran was caught off guard.

138:53This story was This story was unbelievable because it asserted that like there was this meeting of all these high-level people on I'm pretty sure it said that Nasrallah was there. Yeah. Um like all the basically heads of all the all of the all the bad guys according to the Zionist way of looking at the world were all there in Beirut and had a meeting before October 7th. It was just such a complete scam. And of course the person responsible for these stories just got hired by who else but Barry Weiss at CBS News. Well, she was she was the deputy uh the the deputy to Benwa Falcon. But the point is that the bureau chief

139:35clearly was on was trying to guide the US to war with Iran.

139:43And as Israel wanted after October 7th with this utterly bogus story. And has sort of succeeded and now is pushing that Iran is weak and Iran doesn't have any answer to Trump's blockade. Trump, you keep doing it. I mean, that's been the message of the Israel lobby and the monarchist lobby, which are basically one thing, is you know, Trump is smart, Trump is being strong here, stay the course, uh you haven't lost this war, there's more to achieve because they just want to see Iran get hurt more economically, even though there's no clear objective or strategy, and the United States and global economy are

140:20hurting.

140:21Um but yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

140:24Uh I don't know if you want to I mean, I I wasn't planning on covering that, but it is significant. Uh there was a another purge at CBS News under the watch of Bari Weiss.

140:35Yeah, well, they fired a long-time editor in London, uh who was said to be arguing for balanced coverage of the genocide in Gaza.

140:43And so, Bari Weiss ousted her and then appointed someone named Shandy Rice, who is based in where else but Israel, uh who was a deputy foreign editor at The Wall Street Journal and responsible for their Middle East bureau, and was yeah, involved in stories like the one that claimed that UNRWA, the UN uh refugee agency for Gaza, uh had a bunch of staffers involved in October 7th. Uh also, the stories claiming that Hamas had a headquarters under Al-Shifa Hospital.

141:13All this was done on under the tenure of Shandy Rice, whatever her name is. And of course, that makes her qualified for a top job at Bari Weiss's CBS News.

141:23So, here's Bari Weiss announcing Shandy Bari Weiss announces Rice.

141:30Incredible news out of CBS this morning.

141:32Shandy joins us as foreign editor.

141:34Shandy has it all. She's a scoop hound reporter, a brilliant editor, and a clear-eyed leader. She's also curious, dogged, exacting, and tireless.

141:44More here on, you know, from Paramount, which is owned by David Ellison, who is an Israeli asset, whose father, Larry Ellison, is a close friend of Netanyahu and they basically bought Paramount in order to control CBS and gave Barry Weiss $150 million so she could drag CBS's ratings into the toilet and order to make it a Zionist propaganda mechanism and bring people on like Shandy Rice who as you mentioned was responsible for one of the most scandalous stories of the post-October 7th era. I wrote about just a quick thread about her on Twitter that she presided over Wall Street Journal's discredited report falsely

142:27claiming that 12% of UNRWA United Nations employees participated in the October 7th attack. The whole point of this story was to defund and destroy UNRWA which was maintaining the refugee population of Gaza providing them with free schooling and food and shelter.

142:50The fake story was co-authored by Carrie Keller-Lynn who was not only a former reporter for the Times of Israel, she worked for the IDF.

143:00As in their spokesman's office. There's she was a spokesperson for the IDF.

143:06That was the co-author of this story under the watch of Shandy. It helped justify Israel's banning of UNRWA, bombing of its facilities, and ultimately set the stage for its replacement by the murderous Israeli and Trump-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which which spread famine across Gaza. Yeah.

143:26Yeah.

143:26>> So that story has a body count. But there's more. I mean, you know, and you know, she's named in and you know, media reporting at the time by Semaphore. But there's more background on Shandy. I mean, why was she appointed by >> Weiss. He's a Jewish theology professor, I think at the University of Illinois.

143:50Dov Weiss's father is one of the most prominent rabbis in the country, Avi Weiss.

143:57He's a columnist for the Times of Israel.

144:00Uh you know, he hates he hates Mamdani, of course.

144:05Whatever.

144:07David Sheen reminded me and he's done incredible reporting on the whole Kahanist movement that Avi Weiss was an outspoken supporter of the terrorist Jewish underground, which carried out bombings and assassinations of West Bank mayors throughout the 1980s, mayors who supported Palestinian autonomy.

144:33Uh the mayor of Bethlehem, the mayor of Ramallah, they maimed and killed people, and he openly not only spoke out for them, but raised money for them.

144:43So, that says it all about what's going on at CBS.

144:48The And this lady is not just uh Shandy Wright, she's not just going to be like the London bureau chief. She's taking over an entire division.

144:58This is a new position.

145:00It's like Bari Weiss is running her own version of The Apprentice, Donald Trump's reality TV show, but the only criteria for being eliminated is if you don't serve Israel. So, you know, someone gets eliminated from her reality show because they don't serve Israel, and they and they get replaced by someone who does. And like, how far is this going to go when the Allisons end up owning everything, like every media outlet except for, I don't know, The Grayzone and a few and a few others?

145:24Like, they're going to run out run out of Zionists to hire from other outlets.

145:27So, they're going to start what, like like recruiting from like Zionist summer camps and Jewish day schools? Like, they're going to be hiring like freshman kids to be like bureau chiefs? Cuz they're eventually they're going to run out of people to have doing these jobs. It's just um and by the way, also going after UNRWA, the other major reason to destroy it, on top of the fact that it keeps Palestinians in Gaza alive, is that the fact that it's a refugee agency explicitly, it reminds the world that the people of Gaza, for the most part, are refugees, and that refugees have rights, and that they come from

145:59somewhere, a place that they were kicked out of by Israel. And so, it reminds people that Israel is a colonizer, and that the refugees have rights, and so therefore, the agency that keeps refugees alive has to be destroyed and turned into now this thing, an issue not of refugees and having the right to return, having the right to compensation, but just to sort of like being people, oh, like they're displaced, so let's go send them off to Africa or or or wherever else like we can place them. So, it was a deliberate evil, the pinnacle of evil, and the Wall Street Journal took part in it, and so did the Biden administration as well.

146:38The Biden administration laid the groundwork for this. Um, and it's another part of their legacy.

146:42They participated, like Anthony Blinken immediately suspended UNRWA's funding after this Wall Street Journal article.

146:49After that that article. Yeah, and everyone else followed suit, Canada, all these NATO states, it was coordinated.

146:55This was a deliberate campaign, and that can never be forgotten.

147:00So, you have an editor overseeing that piece who's married to the son of a rabbi who raised money for Jewish terrorists in the settlements.

147:11You have a co-author of the piece who was an IDF spokesperson.

147:16And the only sourcing in the piece comes from Israeli intelligence. The whole thing was an Israeli intelligence hoax to defund UNRWA, which succeeded through Tony Blinken, who was the stepson of an Israel lobbyist and the grandson of an Israel lobbyist.

147:37It led to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and famine, a thousand people being shot seeking food at these fake aid sites, uh which itself then was spun out into the Board of Peace, which is led by Jared Kushner, whose family supported Israel, who knew Netanyahu as a young boy when he would stay at his house.

147:59The entire agenda is an Israeli intelligence agenda, and that raises questions. Is Shandy Rice an Israeli intelligence asset who was just hired by CBS News?

148:13Because CBS News is owned by an Israeli asset, David Ellison.

148:18I mean, that's what That's what we're That's what we're dealing with here.

148:23Then you had um what's his name? Their Their um you know, Zionist version of Dan Rather or Peter Jennings. I forget >> The self-circumcised uh guy? Yeah, the guy who had like a circumcision at age 40 Yeah. Yeah.

148:41>> in order to prove himself like so that he could be you know, get in the anchor chair. Yeah.

148:49Uh what's his name? Tony. Tony >> Tony Dokoupil. Yeah. He's like the least watched anchor on TV. His presence has led to a record drop in CBS ratings.

149:00Shocking. Yeah. He He married an Israeli woman and then had to remove his foreskin in order to get into the anchor chair.

149:11That's literally what's going on at CBS News.

149:14Well, his genitals His genitals are a great metaphor for what's happening to the news industry and basically everything. Everything is being cut off, circumcised, uh for the sake >> Neutered. Yeah, neutered for the sake of Israel. That's >> Yeah.

149:28Well, you know, you still got the Gray Zone. I I haven't sold out to any Israel first billionaires yet.

149:36Even though we destroy the free press in YouTube subscribers YouTube views and you know, we're not even pushing it that hard. We're heavily suppressed.

149:50But the part of the rationale for Barry Weiss getting all that money was she rapidly racked up like 300,000 subscribers. Like, wow, that's Look at any of their videos. They sit there for weeks and get 2,000 views.

150:04Nobody wants to watch that. Like No one wants to watch a conversations with Coleman or Yeah, Coleman Hughes aka minivan Jones >> Yeah. uh you know, hosting a debate between uh you know, Alan Dershowitz and uh um Josh Hammer on gun control.

150:28Yeah, that that would Ev- everybody you know, it's like it's like the Iran war. Everyone can see that it's an evil war that serves no American interest.

150:40And everyone can see that the free press is fake propaganda and that CBS is just like it's it's just doesn't work anymore.

150:53And every I think I think the British public can see what's being done to them as well.

150:59Whether they're on the right or on the left they can see that they are subjects of some kind of regime that is doing away with what- whatever's left of what they had of of a democracy, of a social democracy. And you can now go to jail for saying naughty things like I support Palestine action or globalize the Intifada.

151:32And the I don't even want to call it the Israel lobby. It's Israel using the Zionist movement in the UK as a battering ram and all British Jews regardless of what they think as human shields is demanding more.

151:45A demanding total criminalization of Palestine solidarity activity following the stabbing of two Jews and a Muslim man who doesn't exist in British media because it complicates the narrative in the Jewish majority neighborhood of Golders Green in London.

152:05Uh, Keir Starmer res- uh, has responded by calling to basically crack down on Palestine solidarity activity because he has been told to. And this really shows you where we are going in the United States.

152:23Luckily, we have a constitution with the First Amendment, but where they would like to take us, they being the foundation for the destruction of democracy. Here's Keir Starmer.

152:33>> Semitism is an old, old hatred. It's an old He has to say it's an old hatred so that we don't look at it as a response to recent genocides carried out under the flag of the so-called self-proclaimed Jewish state. It's just some old thing that's just there and people just get mad for no reason cuz they don't like Jews cuz we're like so funny and smart. It's a It's like like like like he wants people to think, "Oh, like I think I'm mad about like seeing another massacre of children, but really I wonder if I'm falling victim to some old form of hatred. Let me interrogate that and hold my criticism of the Jewish state. Let me

153:15put that outrage at shredded massacre children on pause as I interrogate my own inner hatred from centuries ago.

153:23That's the point of this. Yeah, yeah.

153:25Am I like a actually Torquemada? Am I like some Spanish Inquisitor when I get mad about the Gaza genocide? Maybe.

153:33Torquemada. Tor- Torquemada. Remember uh Mel Brooks' History of the World? It's like that level of farce. All right, here we go. Keir Starmer.

153:43The least popular British Prime Minister in since anyone can remember. Like the most hated man in the UK. The most discredited figure is still at it.

153:53The roots are deep.

153:56And if you turn away, it grows back.

154:00Yet far too many people in this country diminish it.

154:06He's attacking Brits.

154:08He's attacking British citizens who are mad about genocide and mad about being criminalized for their words.

154:15They either don't see it or they don't want to see it.

154:20Take the marches that happen regularly across Britain.

154:24The marches?

154:25>> Of course, we protect freedom of speech and peaceful protest in this country.

154:30But if you are marching with people wearing pictures of paragliders without calling it out Paragliders? venerating the murder of Jews.

154:43If you stand alongside people who say globalize the intifada you are calling for terrorism against Jews.

154:53And people who use that phrase should be prosecuted.

154:58Oh my god.

155:00Man, do not go to the UK.

155:04That is just horrible.

155:07I mean, he's demonizing so many British citizens there who are just decent people who are sick of the slaughter of children and calling for them to be prosecuted.

155:17And he's catering to a foreign country, a foreign lobby, after what he what is supposed to we're supposed to look at as this ideologically guided terror attack, which was nothing of the sort.

155:36The marches, the marches.

155:39The marches.

155:41The The attacker was not involved in the marches.

155:45He was a mentally ill man who tried to stab his own Muslim roommate before he carried out these attacks.

155:52And the Metropolitan Police are saying pretty much the same thing that Keir Starmer is. They're reading from the same script that was handed to them by the same elements.

156:02Two men, one in his 70s and one in their 30s, were treated at the scene for stab wounds, and they were not taken to hospital.

156:10The 45-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and remains in custody following a checkup at the local hospital.

156:19He has a history of serious violence and mental health issues. So, they admit that he this the attacker actually uh stabbed a police officer before and has tried to stab several other attacked several other people in the past going back to 2008 and was registered with the Prevent program, which is this uh counterterrorism, counter-radicalization program put in place by the British state, which clearly didn't work.

156:47And that investigation continues.

156:50Let me say a few words about what this was. Let me be clear.

156:55This is an attack on one community. An attack on one community is an attack on all London's communities.

157:02This was an attack on Londoners.

157:04It is an attack on British Jews.

157:08Too many Jewish people in this country feel they have to make choices that no other Britain ever has to make.

157:15They have to make choices about how they dress, where they go, or how visibly they live their lives.

157:21That's completely unacceptable and has gone on for far too long.

157:27We also need to be honest about the nature of the threat. Antisemitism is fueled by hateful and extremist ideologies. It comes from hostile states, the extreme right, and the extreme left.

157:39These are terrorist and hateful belief systems, but they're all rooted in racism.

157:44So, the the left and the right are terrorist racist, and this attack was guided by foreign states like Iran. However, it was carried out by a mentally ill man but with a history of violence, and it was targeting one community, but that's not even true.

158:04They're lying.

158:06A A Muslim man was stabbed by the same person that same day. That's Is that a different community?

158:15So, everything that's being said here is a bogus script, and you can see the Shomrim behind on on the left to the left of this Metro police official. The Shomrim are a Jewish paramilitary force uh run under the watch of the CST and other supposed community organizations which were was basically gifted 25 million pounds uh after this attack.

158:46The Metro police are reading from a politicized script.

158:52I wonder how this will play out at the trial if there is one. Are they going to bring in some expert to argue about the guy's motives and when it comes to his stabbing of the Muslim man, they'll say mental illness.

159:04And then when it's the two Jews, that was anti-Semitism? Like, how does that fly?

159:09It's so incoherent.

159:12Um There was another incident recently, right with the burning of the ambulances in London.

159:19>> Yeah. Yeah. And also in Golders Green.

159:22Also Golders which looked like a a false flag. I think that's fair to say. I mean I mean um so it's like they're just they're dying for any excuse to justify suppressing free further uh a further suppression of free speech in the UK uh if that free speech criticizes Israel.

159:42Well, it really raises some serious questions that I think go beyond um just the political machinations of Keir Starmer or the Metro Police as they seek to crack down on Palestine Solidarity Protest.

160:03The the ambulance attack uh was s- not treated as a terrorist attack.

160:13And the assailants were let out on bail.

160:16All right, you don't let assailants out on bail if they are terrorists.

160:20And there was another attack soon after on Iran International which is an Israeli controlled network that aims to destabilize Iran. It's a satellite network. Most people watching this know what it is. It's it has its offices in London. It's being maintained by Israel. So, you would think that would be a target for Iran. Like you know, the IRGC would want to target that network.

160:50And an Israeli consular facility, I think it was the Israeli Embassy, supposedly came under attack. But it was a s- very suspicious attack where nothing was damaged.

161:02Those who've been arrested in each attack tend to be teenagers.

161:07Those who attacked Iran International were not Iranian immigrants to the UK.

161:14They were like English with English names.

161:19Like white boys.

161:21Why would they Why would some like 18-year-old English kid who has no politics attack Iran International?

161:30And I think it was the same with the culprits of the attack on um the same with the culprits of the attack on the Israeli Embassy.

161:45Uh it They're being paid in crypto by a certain foreign entity.

161:55Let me read a I'm pulling up another clip here cuz this really raises questions about what's going on.

162:01First of all, all of this is being blamed including the uh stabbing attacks of two Jews and one Muslim man who doesn't exist on a group called Harakat al-Shabaab al-Islamiya which is said to be an Iranian IRGC-linked group but actually only consists of a Telegram channel. Wyatt did a really good takedown of this fraud for us at The Gray Zone. It's basically a Telegram channel.

162:34The language in the manifesto of al-Shabaab al-Islamiya recognizes Israel as a legitimate state which is something like no Iranian or resistance access group would do.

162:47Um things are spelled wrong in its communique and it claims responsibility for all anything that happens here. It claimed responsibility for the Golders Green ambulance attack. It claimed responsibility for uh a break-in of a car in a Jewish neighborhood in I think Antwerp.

163:06Which the car actually belonged to a Moroccan Muslim woman. So, anytime anything happens in a Jewish area, this Telegram channel claims credit in order to blame Iran. It's pretty obvious obvious that this channel is run by Israeli intelligence and that they're seeking to get the media to blame Iran, which it which it proceeds to do. Like the Telegram uh Telegraph blamed Iran for the stabbings.

163:34They they follow their orders. But, look at the the last line here.

163:39It's referring to um an arson in Hendon.

163:43Um and Clinton says, "The group has claimed six attacks since early April including arsons at Jewish community ambulances, a synagogue, and a Persian language media outlet. That's Iran International." Analysts note its branding mirrors that of pro-Iranian militias. No, those are like pro-Israel analysts. "Though some members may be {quote} criminals for hire recruited online and paid in cryptocurrency."

164:10That sounds familiar.

164:11Where else was that taking place?

164:15Which other Five Eyes Commonwealth country was that taking place in?

164:21It was in Australia.

164:24The Australia of PM Anthony Albanese immediately after Albanese announced his intention to recognize a Palestinian state, these attacks began happening uh on Jewish targets.

164:38The first attack was an arson outside a synagogue, which happened to be a non-Zionist synagogue. Very interesting.

164:45With the congregation that was defying Israel. And who was carrying out the attacks? criminal class non-political elements paid in cryptocurrency, offered cryptocurrency through Telegram channels, paid from abroad. Albanese actually came out and declared that these are he called them paid actors.

165:08And all of it was being blamed on Iran.

165:10What was the consequence of these attacks paid in cryptocurrency from abroad to criminal elements and you know, some homeless people were paid crypto to carry out certain attacks, people who have no ideology.

165:26The Iranian ambassador was kicked out of Australia.

165:30And then Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, comes to Australia to meet with Albanese.

165:38Uh, inspires large protests in Melbourne.

165:43And he's gearing up Australia to support Israel the coming war on Iran. And he holds a secret meeting with the head of ASIO, the Australian state security intelligence organization.

166:00Something that has never happened before.

166:03Very strange.

166:04And the outcome and and and in that meeting he was pushing for more action against Iran. So, the point is we're seeing the same dynamic in the UK as in Australia, the same outcome.

166:16More pressure on these states to join the war against Iran, which they're currently they're currently involved in at a low intensity level.

166:30And only one country is served by this.

166:33Only one country is served by it. It's Israel. It is not Iran and this is not part of Iran's playbook. So, it's important to look at the big picture and go back to the point I made earlier in my conversation with Wyatt, which is that Israel and the Zionist movement has a long history of attacking Jews in order to achieve its malign objectives. Going back to the bombing of the Patria in 1940, a history which everyone should learn.

167:05So, let's raise these questions. Let's not be afraid to raise these questions about who benefits from this because it's certainly not the British public and it's not Iran. No, and especially when after the Bondi Beach shooting that you mentioned Netanyahu openly blamed the Australian Prime Minister, Albanese.

167:25He openly He said like this is your fault for fueling the fire of anti-Semitism because you you know, as you mentioned Max, because you supported a Palestinian state. So, Israel didn't hide the fact that it was willing to exploit these attacks for its own cynical ends.

167:40And so, given its long history of fueling attacks like this, it's totally fair to raise the questions that you're raising.

167:47Yeah.

167:49Um So, with that I actually have to do a hard stop.

167:55Uh I guess we we covered a lot.

167:59And I uh got something else wrong on the schedule.

168:04S- I wanted to cover uh the OPCW whistleblower who uh who you've been advocating for winning their case against the OPCW, but everyone should read about that at your Substack.

168:20Aaron Maté Substack.

168:23Uh thank you all for joining us for a live stream that one of our live streams which haven't been frequent enough.

168:31We'll try to make them more frequent. Uh subscribe, like and uh support us in any way you see fit. You're supporting on the ground journalism like Wyatt's. And we will uh see you all soon. Thanks for being with us, Aaron.

168:47Peace everybody. Peace.